[ale] Wireless Design Suggestions

Geoffrey esoteric at 3times25.net
Wed Jan 1 11:34:59 EST 2003 

Take a good look around in your attic.  No house uses 100% of the space, 
there are likely small dead spaces that you might be able to use as a 
drop.  I've got just such a space that is triagular in shape, and runs 
from the attic all the way to the basement.  The main difficulty with 
such a solution is that often times they'll have a floor at one of the 
levels you'd have to get through (extension for a drill bit works fine).

I ran cat5 from the NE side of my basement to the SE side of my house. 
It was easy running the basement section through the open floor joists. 
  I then drilled into my garage where you I ran the cat5 up the side of 
the garage door, over the ceiling and through it to a closet on the top 
floor.  From the closet it goes to a 5 port switch which is connected to 
my wife's computer in a spare room and to my daughters computer in her 
room.  There's about 10ft visible in the garage, but once painted is 
sufficiently hidden for a garage.

I believe you can also purchase cat5 that is designed for outdoor use, 
I've not noted if mine is or not.  With such, you can go through a wall, 
run around the outside of the house and to the pretty much any location.

Robert L. Harris wrote:
> 
> This is exactly why I hit the list, I respect probably 99% of the
> opionins on this list as intelligent and non-crackpot.  I of corse
> belong in the 1% most would argue...
> 
> I'll try and describe it best I can as I'm not living there and can't
> upload pics or a diagram.  Description is as if standing in the front
> door looking at the back wall.
> 
> 2story house.
>   1st floor is layed out with 4 rooms with a hallway going down the
> middle of the left and right halves.  Garage is attached on the side to
> the right, out of the scenario.  Family room where I want the one desk
> with the 3 computers is in the far left corner and the desk will go on
> the outside,backside wall.
> 
>   2nd floor is pretty much identicle except the 2 farthest rooms are
> merged into one master bedroom/bathroom.  The "server room" will be in
> the closest room on the left.
> 
>   As a result I have to go from top front left of the house to bottom
> left back of the house.  I have to check out the actual "filler" in the
> walls and how thick the floors if I can drop from the 2nd floor to the
> first, through the floor into the crawlspace below, then across to the
> wall where I want to put the desk and back up but that's putting a lot of
> holes in floors and probably walls to get to the floors between the
> walls to drop down.
> 
>   No she won't let me run a cable out the window and back in the house
> downstairs.
> 
> 
> Robert
>   
> 
> Thus spake Geoffrey (esoteric at 3times25.net):
> 
> 
>>Excellent point.  I've done some esoteric things to get cat5 from my 
>>basement to my 2nd floor.  It took probably twice as much cable, but I'm 
>>still married. :)
>>
>>Robert, what say you share the site layout and see if we can come up 
>>with a wired solution that's acceptable?  After all, more geeks then you 
>>can shake a stick (of memory) at on this list, someone might see 
>>something you didn't consider...
>>
>>
>>James P. Kinney III wrote:
>>
>>>Wireless networking absolutely SUCKS!!!
>>>
>>>Slow. Expensive. Slow. SLow. SLOw. SLOW!
>>>
>>>Unless you drop the $$$$$ for 802.11a which still runs a single
>>>connection only at half the speed of a crappy wired connection. 
>>>
>>>Dropping a cat5e line between floors is not _that_ difficult. It's also
>>>cheap. For the cost of a decent AP, you can wire the entire house with
>>>cat5e. 8 port 100BaseT switches can be had for $40.
>>>
>>>Besides, how much microwave radiation does your spouse want bouncing
>>>through her? Or you for that matter? Be realistic. How long can the
>>>laptop run not plugged into the wall?  Do you really want to reduce the
>>>network speed in your house to that of a dialup line? Remember, unless
>>>you get the latest stuff (not all supported in Linux), wireless is not a
>>>full duplex transmission. And don't use the cordless phone while you are
>>>downloading.
>>>
>>>On Mon, 2002-12-30 at 13:38, Robert L. Harris wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Ok, looks like we're finally getting a house next month.  At any rate,
>>>>it's a 2 story and my server room will be upstairs but I'll need to hook
>>>>up 3 machines downstairs.  I've got the ports on my 2 switches to run a
>>>>cable but my wife has pretty much infomred me I'll be sleeping on the
>>>>garage floor if I do it.
>>>>
>>>>I'm thinking of going to Costco and getting their netger wireless kit
>>>>for $150 which has an access point and a card.  I can then put the
>>>>single card into a dedicated server in the server room and the access
>>>>point in my living room.  That way the 3 machines downstairs can use
>>>>their switch to uplink to the AP.  2 of the machines are dual boot so I
>>>>don't want to use them as a router.  The 3rd is a laptop which will be
>>>>traveling.
>>>>
>>>>The server upstairs will be running 192.168.1/24 off the wireless card
>>>>and be using mac filtering for starters and then going from there as I
>>>>learn how to tighten it down more.
>>>>
>>>>I'm not worried about anyone stealing BW from me as it'll be very easy
>>>>to see them due to geography.  As per neighbors, I've got my machines
>>>>locked up pretty tight, I think they may be able to print to my printer
>>>>is all for now.
>>>>
>>>>Thoughts, theories, suggestions, etc?
>>>>
>>>>Robert
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>:wq!
>>>>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>Robert L. Harris                     | PGP Key ID: FC96D405
>>>>                             
>>>>DISCLAIMER:
>>>>    These are MY OPINIONS ALONE.  I speak for no-one else.
>>>>FYI:
>>>>perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);'
>>
>>-- 
>>Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at 3times25.net
>>
>>The latest, most widespread virus?  Microsoft end user agreement.
>>Think about it...
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Ale mailing list
>>Ale at ale.org
>>http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :wq!
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Robert L. Harris                     | PGP Key ID: FC96D405
>                                
> DISCLAIMER:
>       These are MY OPINIONS ALONE.  I speak for no-one else.
> FYI:
>  perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);'
> 

-- 
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at 3times25.net

The latest, most widespread virus?  Microsoft end user agreement.
Think about it...

_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale

More information about the Ale mailing list