Home Wiring

tech
1

I recently purchased my first home (yay!). Being the home-theater freak that I am, now that I actually own a home, it’s time to beef up the tech infrastructure.

This is where my fellow denizens of DoD come in:

You see, being in Shreveport, LA, my options as far as folks who can install home theater systems are limited from what I’ve deduced. I won’t delve into the specifics as to the hardware just yet, but I have a few things in mind.

My chief concern is who the heck do I call to wire my home? Honestly, I could do the whole thing myself, but since I’ve never attempted such a thing before, I figured I might leave it to those with more experience and, perhaps, save the learning for less expansive projects in the future. Plus, as a surgical resident, it’s not likely I’ll be able to dedicate a ton of time to do this myself.

Here are my goals:

  1. Have the home wired and ready for when I’m able to set up all the components. This means having appropriate HDMI cables through the wall where I want to mount the TV in addition to having the wiring revamped (the previous owner already have wires in place, but they are in an odd place (i.e the “hub” for the components are in the fire place). The receiver I anticipate buying will allow me to set up a second zone as well so I plan to wire speakers for the backyard; pretty straight forward.

  2. OMG INTERWEBS: I’d like to set up ethernet cabling and jacks through the home as well. I anticipated purchasing a 16-24 port switch from Netgear. This would afford me placement of two ports in each bedroom (x3), the kitchen, and 4-6 in the living room with all my devices (consoles, apple TV, etc, and I hate wireless). Even a 16 port switch would allow me a few open slots to hook up my wireless solution for my remaining devices (not sure if the switch has a dedicated port for that). The caveat to all this is our home security is wireless, and the “router” for the set up has to be directly connected to the cable modem. Not sure if a switch can work around this or not.

So, that’s my project for this home while I’m here over the next few years. I’m looking for any suggestions on how to get started on this. Aside from the ghostbusters, who am I gonna call to get this ball rolling? Any other constructive advice or comments much appreciated.

2

Maybe buy a wireless home theater setup? :slight_smile:

3

Damnit houla, he said he hates wireless!

My suggestion won’t be much better though, I strongly encourage you to do it yourself! No better way of finding out about your new home then getting your hands a bit dirty. Always helps to know whats inside your walls before you have other people digging around in em, lets you know what was already there and what the worker just fucked up and is trying to hide. That, and apart from the slight trickyness of fishing the wires down walls, its a fairly easy task to rewire stuff.

4

So you are or are not doing this yourself? If you aren’t then what’s the point of the post? Get some pros in there and let them have at it.

If you are doing this yourself, figure out where you want everything first and map it out, measure twice and cut once etc. Do you have a full attic or just a crawlspace (or maybe you have a finished basement and would rather the networking equipment down there)? Again depending on what you are doing you’d need some push-pull rods: http://www.amazon.com/Eclipse-902-302-10-Piece-Fiberglass-Attachments/dp/B0030EOM66 and a stud finder would be a good investment.

Really can’t give you much more helpful information, Johnny 5 need more input. Otherwise: http://bit.ly/1gDGMGD

5

Thanks, Dalans, but I wouldn’t have posted that if I hadn’t googled it myself. Basically I was looking more for general knowledge because I wasn’t sure if I needed multiple professionals or just one. If the guy who wires my home theater is able to include the ethernet and possibly adding lines for the cable modem too, then that’s what I need. Most of the businesses I saw were geared more for commercial. I just wanted to be sure I was contacting the correct people, but also piquing the interest of my fellow DoD’ers who have performed similar jobs or have similar interests. I like to hear ideas as home theater is something I enjoy.

As for the house, it’s pier and beam, so going underneath the house is an option, however, this would leave the cables and wires relatively exposed. I’d prefer not to do that if avoidable.

6

Paying people do stuff?! WHAT?! no ways… that’s what lazy people do! everyone in their own momma pays for stuff they could do their self! let’s pay someone for… a car wash, cutting my lawn, cleaning my house, giving me a blow job… Ok, you can’t do that last one on your own! lol :trollface::trollface::trollface:Alright, I’m done trolling haha :trollface::trollface::trollface: Everyone hates wireless, but so convenient, otherwise do the wiring yourself by going through ceiling or using some kind of method to hide the wiring or just pay someone do install it. Being a home theater, if it was me… I would just do it myself. I hate paying people do stuff that I could easily do myself that doesn’t require a certification or degree in. Any way… GL!

7

Well i think I have a plan as far as the hard-wire is concerned; my next plan is to actually enable the network.

I picked up a Motorola SB6141 Cable modem one year ago to in order to stave off rental charges from Comcast ($7 a month??!?). Things have been running reasonably well, however, this particular modem doesn’t come with multiple ports, which leads me to the next phase of my project.

I prefer to continue using the wireless solution I employ currently for enabled devices. Obviously, as mentioned before, my goal is to hard-wire my computing, streaming, and gaming devices, but now I’m not so sure how to accomplish this.

Most DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems with multiple ports are wireless router/modem combos that I do not wish to delve into. I have yet to find one that doesn’t act as a gateway of sorts. I was hoping that a gigabit switch might suffice to distribute my internet needs, but from what I understand this will not assign or distribute proper IP addresses for me to do this.

My options are to invest in a new modem/router with ports, or purchase a separate router altogether to enable internet connection for all my devices.

the caveat to this is the required router needed for my home security. For whatever reason, this router has to be between the modem and my other devices in order to work properly (essentially it’s own firewall of sorts). It chokes the shit out of my signal so I was hoping to have this bypassed either through the modem directly, or through another router. My goal was to set up the router/network to distribute IPs (instead of sharing one) so that I can essentially isolate the home security router and not have to use it for the remaining devices (if that will work).

That being said, I would appreciate any clarifications on misunderstandings on that point. I only have a rudimentary knowledge of network solutions, and I haven’t found a good resource online (as of yet) that offers adequate explanation to help me get this project off the ground. Consequently, I’m hoping you folks might point me in the right direction. Any recommendations on hardware is also appreciated.

Update: Spoke with Comcast: I do NOT need to keep their security router in between my home network and the modem. Who ever they have working for them are a bunch of dumb-asses.

8

Comcast has dumbasses working for them you say? One of their phone techs tried to convince me their router didn’t have a web GUI and then when I told him I’ve worked with the device before told me I had no need to access it when trying to address a port forwarding issue…

Looks like Comcast has a list of compatible devices that work on their network, you may want to stick to that list so you don’t run into any issues down the road of them not troubleshooting something because you went off the script so to speak: http://mydeviceinfo.comcast.net/ I’m fairly certain I have installed the D-Link model, all of the retail Netgear models and the Comcast provided SMC models on that page. IIRC the SMCs do not do wireless and from the spec sheet the D-link listed there also does not but all the Netgears do.

For whatever reason they have a different Netgear model identification number but you can compare from the Comcast page to this one here: http://www.netgear.com/home/products/networking/cable-modems-routers/ The N300 or N600 is going to be what you are looking for, for an all in one modem, gigabit and wireless solution.

To answer your question though, there are managed switches that will do DHCP but those are going to run you much more than one of those Netgear devices. Alternatively if you wanted to continue to use the modem you have you could run a DHCP server off of a dedicated machine with some software: http://www.dhcpserver.de/dhcpsetup.htm This is the one we use on our segmented network to image computers. However that won’t solve your port/wireless issue so I’d still say go with the Netgear.

9

Yeah I’ve been good at sticking with their compatible devices. I think I’m going to try and keep my router and cable modem separate for the time being. This way I can replace/upgrade individually, which should hopefully save time and money.

I’ve looked through netgear’s equipment quite a bit, and I’d run into the same problem as my motorola. fortunately, the motorola modem is working well, so i shouldn’t need changes on that end as long as I dont need to plug in directly. I still might switch to one for the added ports so I can directly connect a few devices into the modem with my own wireless solution. It would be nice if the modem could provide multiple WAN ports without having a router, if that makes sense, because I prefer my current router. I’m very familiar with the UI and prefer to stick with it.