House rewire, modem router and cat 6 question????
Discussion
davepoth said:
I did say "simplified a lot". 
In the topology the OP will have, the "Modem" will be the device that will provide the DHCP and IP functions - a BT Homehub or Virgin Superhub, or something similar. The "Router" in this situation is acting as a Wireless Access Point, and won't be providing any network services.
No it won't, in the case of Virgin you'd want the Superhub in modem only mode as they usually suck as a routerIn the topology the OP will have, the "Modem" will be the device that will provide the DHCP and IP functions - a BT Homehub or Virgin Superhub, or something similar. The "Router" in this situation is acting as a Wireless Access Point, and won't be providing any network services.
Mark300zx said:
He has wired all the Cat 6 to the cellar, instead of to the wireless modem situated in the kitchen, so I presume a cable will have to go to the router from the modem unless anyone can think of another way around this?
You will saturate xDSL broadband well before the Cat6, so a single connection between modem router and switch in cellar will be fine with 1000T Gigabit ethernet devices. The spark doesn't instil confidence, have the physical connections at least been network continuity tested? If not you can get one for a tenner from B&Q. Did he installed a patch panel or wall sockets in cellar? They serve the same purpose but the patch panel is more compact and suitable for use with a switch.
If you want the best then go for something from the Netgear Nighthawk vDSL modem R78000 (£250) or R7000 (£150) or if on a budget then Linksys WRT54GL (£50) wireless modem for kitchen.
A Netgear GS108 switch (£30-£40) for the celler.
Edited by 4x4Tyke on Monday 26th September 18:19
OP, I've just done what you are trying to do, will attempt to explain, hope this helps.
I got the electrician to terminate all of the cat6 in a patch panel. I then bought a cisco switch from amazon, I needed 24 and got one for about £100, if you only have 7 you can get a 12 port switch for much less. You simply plug patch cables (small ethernet cables) into the patch panel and the switch.
I then had sky installed and they put the master phone socket in the study, thats where my sky router sits. I plug an ethernet cable into the ethernet socket in the study and the other end in the sky router. The patch panel that has the study connected to it you plug into the "in" port on the switch. The switch then distributes the internet to each ethernet socket in each room.
I then connected a wireless access point to the switch (but I could also plug it into any of the ethernet sockets throughout the house). All my wireless devises then connect to the wireless access point. Sky wireless still exists but we don't use it(its weak in places whereas the access point is more consistent). I used a ubiquiti access point but there are various options).
If we move to virgin or bt etc we just unplug the sky router and plug in theirs, everything else stays as it is and just works. We actually started with virgin then moved to sky.
Hope that helps!
I got the electrician to terminate all of the cat6 in a patch panel. I then bought a cisco switch from amazon, I needed 24 and got one for about £100, if you only have 7 you can get a 12 port switch for much less. You simply plug patch cables (small ethernet cables) into the patch panel and the switch.
I then had sky installed and they put the master phone socket in the study, thats where my sky router sits. I plug an ethernet cable into the ethernet socket in the study and the other end in the sky router. The patch panel that has the study connected to it you plug into the "in" port on the switch. The switch then distributes the internet to each ethernet socket in each room.
I then connected a wireless access point to the switch (but I could also plug it into any of the ethernet sockets throughout the house). All my wireless devises then connect to the wireless access point. Sky wireless still exists but we don't use it(its weak in places whereas the access point is more consistent). I used a ubiquiti access point but there are various options).
If we move to virgin or bt etc we just unplug the sky router and plug in theirs, everything else stays as it is and just works. We actually started with virgin then moved to sky.
Hope that helps!
I'm personally running a router/modem (plus net) plugged into a 8 port switch in the garage (Wifi switched off, but provides the IP numbers)
From the 8 ports, 2 X airport extremes provide the wireless, then computer/firebox/atv/Wii/tv plugged in, in various rooms.
So everything connects to the switch.
From the 8 ports, 2 X airport extremes provide the wireless, then computer/firebox/atv/Wii/tv plugged in, in various rooms.
So everything connects to the switch.
Mark300zx said:
Please excuse my lack of IT prowess :S
Had my house rewired and the electrician is a bit of a plug and a few questions have arisen which he now tells me he knows little about!!!!!
I've had cat 6 installed in most rooms in the house, I need a modem and I think I need a router to distribute wired internet to all the outlets?
Am I correct in presuming the router needs to be linked to the modem?
He has wired all the Cat 6 to the cellar, instead of to the wireless modem situated in the kitchen, so I presume a cable will have to go to the router from the modem unless anyone can think of another way around this?
There is a lot of useful info in this thread but some of it is a bit jumbled - like a jigsaw with the pieces still all over the table. So let's try from the start. Had my house rewired and the electrician is a bit of a plug and a few questions have arisen which he now tells me he knows little about!!!!!
I've had cat 6 installed in most rooms in the house, I need a modem and I think I need a router to distribute wired internet to all the outlets?
Am I correct in presuming the router needs to be linked to the modem?
He has wired all the Cat 6 to the cellar, instead of to the wireless modem situated in the kitchen, so I presume a cable will have to go to the router from the modem unless anyone can think of another way around this?
Your internet feed comes from outside the house via a cable. If you use BT it will look like a phone cable. If Sky or Virgin, a satellite cable. The first thing you need is a modem. This decodes the data in the cable. The modem will usually be installed by BT/Sky/Virgin, in your house. "Where" depends. BT tend to put it close to the first phone socket that the phone cable comes to once it enters the house. Sky/Virgin may be more accommodating. It's worth giving a little bit of thought to where you want it.
You *can* stop there. Just plug your laptop/PC into the modem and off you go. Except you'll only be able to use one device at a time to access the Internet, and no one really wants to unplug their PC and plug in their Sky box with a long cable across the floor every time they want to watch TV. And just using a modem isn't very secure.
So the next thing you need is a router. A router "routes" the Internet feed between the devices in your house that need it. You connect the router to the modem via a wired Ethernet connection. The router also assigns every device a unique address in your house, so that data doesn't get sent to the wrong place. Routers usually have a few (4/8) ports, or outlets, so you can plug a few devices (PC, laptop, Set top box, Apple TV) into them, And most routers come with wifi, so you can have loads of devices accessing the Internet wirelessly once you have a wifi router.
Some broadband suppliers will give you something that is a modem and a router in the same box (eg BT's hub). You can use this as they intended, or you can disable the router functions, let it work as a modem alone, and add your own router to it via a wired connection. I prefer to use my own router. Most people who've posted on this thread do too by the looks of it. A Netgear WNDR3800 or 4500 work fine for me.
So far so good.
Now, as ambition increases, problems arise. First, what if you have devices that need more bandwidth than your wifi can comfortably provide (eg HD video)? Well, you want to connect those devices to the router with a wired connection, not a wifi connection. Hence why your electrician has run the cables he has down to your cellar.
Secondly, what if your wifi can't quite reach everywhere in the house? Or your neighbours have a wifi network that is drowning yours? You want some more wifi transmission points around your house. These - wifi access points - ideally are connected to the router by a wired connection.
Still - hopefully - so far so good.
Now what happens if you find you really have a lot of devices? Say 7 rooms. Smart TVs in 2, set top boxes in 2, Apple TVs in two. PCs in another three, wifi access points in another 2. That's 11 devices which you'd want wired rather than wireless. You could put switches in each room. A switch is a dumb "splitter" of your internet signal, splitting it between the devices to which it is attached. Then your internet "picture" has a router with 7 lines coming off it, and each of those 7 lines spreads out into 3 or 4 more lines (when it arrives at the switch in each room).
This isn't good topology. You are better running one cable from the router to a big (16/24 port) switch, and then run individual cables from the switch to each device. Cable and cabling is relatively cheap, and sorting out network problems is often a time consuming headache which doesn't provide a permanent fix. For this reason people often run (at least) two I cables to each room in the house.
So, to summarise, best course is modem -> router -> switch. Then individual cables from the switch to each device in the house that needs a wired connection (incl wifi access points, which fall into that category).
You might also want to think about power points - it's almost inevitable you'll need more than you think you need.
HTH
davgar said:
Great thread.
If you were looking for BT/Sky Fibre and the best Wireless setup in a normal house what do you guys recommend.
I can tell you what I have. Whether it is the best is open to question. I'm not sure the guy who did my Ethernet cabling would recommend it!If you were looking for BT/Sky Fibre and the best Wireless setup in a normal house what do you guys recommend.
BT infinity modem -> Netgear WNDR3800 router -> 24 port switch. Pretty much every room in the house has two Ethernet cables running to them from the switch. There are four running to the main TV. I've got four wifi APs running off the switch at various places around the house (partly because the walls degrade the signal and partly to drown out the neighbours' wifi) - I'm using Netgear WNDR 4500s set up as wifi APs (the cable guy doesn't like this - he suggests using "proper" APs rather than crippled wifi routers. Me: meh).
My other break with best practice is that we have an outbuilding served by a single Ethernet cable. That has another Netgear 4500 on the end of it acting as a wifi AP but also has 4 wired devices hanging off it using it as a switch. He doesn't like that - using it as a switch off the main switch either. He's got more of the point there, but the usage isn't high enough to cause an issue.
For me, the wired connections have become a bit more important as (a) I've got five Apple TV4s dotted around the place and (b) I've just put my entire DVD/BD collected on a hard drive in .mkv format and want to be able to stream those films reliably anywhere around the house. The main stuff using wifi now is iPads, iPhones, a printer, and the kids' laptops. We have Sonos but that is still on its own proprietary wireless mesh.
Mattt said:
You mention Sky - they just use Openreach though surely not the Sat Coax?
They don't run their own FTTP or anything like that?
Do they? Dunno. Don't have Sky*. Just assumed they'd run a sat coax from their dish. Happy to be corrected. They don't run their own FTTP or anything like that?
* I use the NowTV app in Apple TV to buy passes for the rugby tests or the occasional F1 Race, which is all I'd want Sky for. Things like Game of Thrones I'd rather wait for the ATV release of the series and binge watch.
The dish is for TV and receives signals only - it cannot transmit back to satellites.
You can get satellite broadband but AFAIK Sky is not one of them and they use specialist kit (also suffers from poor latency).
Almost everyone, Virgin excluded, will use the BT Openreach infrastructure.
You can get satellite broadband but AFAIK Sky is not one of them and they use specialist kit (also suffers from poor latency).
Almost everyone, Virgin excluded, will use the BT Openreach infrastructure.
God it is like a study group for CCNA 101 here.
My set up in our home that is 3 floors is very simple. We have Virgin so that provides 4 port connections on that router, 1 for PS3, 1 for PS4 and then one CAT6 cable runs to the second floor where it is connected to a router which has WiFi enabled and from that router I have a CAT6 running to my sons gaming PC. Another CAT6 from the Virgin Router is ran all the way to the top floor where my office is and there I have an Apple Airport Extreme. Airport has several ports, two CAT6 cables are ran to my laptops and the other two run to my workstations.
As you can see, my set up has zero need for a switch. I will be getting a CISCO switch, forget the model number but it is one of the good ones we worked on when I was going for my CCNA certification. Going to be putting a workstation in the downstairs area. I only use wired LAN as wireless is a no-no for me. Onlyhave wireless for the tablets.
My set up in our home that is 3 floors is very simple. We have Virgin so that provides 4 port connections on that router, 1 for PS3, 1 for PS4 and then one CAT6 cable runs to the second floor where it is connected to a router which has WiFi enabled and from that router I have a CAT6 running to my sons gaming PC. Another CAT6 from the Virgin Router is ran all the way to the top floor where my office is and there I have an Apple Airport Extreme. Airport has several ports, two CAT6 cables are ran to my laptops and the other two run to my workstations.
As you can see, my set up has zero need for a switch. I will be getting a CISCO switch, forget the model number but it is one of the good ones we worked on when I was going for my CCNA certification. Going to be putting a workstation in the downstairs area. I only use wired LAN as wireless is a no-no for me. Onlyhave wireless for the tablets.
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