I live in a four bed house which is quite long & L-shaped. The BT master socket is in the South bedroom. There's a middle bedroom, and the North bedroom, next to which is the bathroom, both over the parlour, and then, sticking out, is the West bedroom, with the study beneath. All the walls are solid brick, so the wire-less telephone doesn't work in the study.
Next to the master telephone socket is the BTHub5-ZGCS router, and from that runs a cable to a Devolo "dLAN Highspeeed Ethernet II" gizmo. We have three more of those - one in the dining room for the laptop, one in the parlour for the TV (YouView, iPlayer, etc.), and one in the study for the DeskTop. It all seems to work OK.
However, when the children come with their SmartPhones, etc., they can't connect wirelessly except in the room where the router is (or the dining room beneath). And I would like to put an Ethernet-connected hard drive in the garage for back-up (it's NOT a back-up if it's under the same roof !)
We are having some building work done, so it seems a good moment to hard-wire the house for Ethernet, and to run a telephone cable to the study - & maybe to the garage as well ;-)
Telephone, I can deal with. No big problem; just connect the matched colours, & spur off, keeping the REN below 4.
BUT - I know virtually NOTHING about Ethernet ! I have looked at
http://forum.havetheknowhow.com/viewtop ... f=4&t=3191
... which is a very similar case to mine, and I have also looked at
http://forum.havetheknowhow.com/viewtop ... f=8&t=2896
... but that's FAR too technical for me !
I propose to run a Cat6 cable from a new socket near the master socket, under the floor, then up behind the wardrobe into the loft, then along to drop a feed down to the parlour, then another from the loft down to the study, and one from the loft out to the garage.
Running the cables is no problem - though it may be a challenge in places ;-) Terminating each cable in a socket in the wall also is no problem, so long as I make sure I use the correct T568A or B colour coding ! But how do I know which to use ? Presumably it doesn't matter, if *I* am consistent ?
But what I do NOT know is - what to do with the cut-off ends of the cables in the loft ?
For Ethernet, I happen to have, acquired over the years, these powered gizmos (routers?):-
1. In use in the North bedroom the BTHub5-ZGCS mentioned above, with IN - DSL WAN and OUT - 4 sockets & a USB port.
2. BTHub3-6NCG Type B, with an aerial, and ADSL & BT Infinity sockets, a USB port and 4 sockets, No.4 labelled GigE
3. Belkin N wireless Modem router, with ADSL & 4 sockets
4. Virgin Super Hub (Netgear) with coax cable input & 4 sockets
5. Netgear (no model no.) with aerial, ADSL and 4 sockets.
I had thought, in my ignorance, that I could just plonk one of these powered routers into the loft over the North bedroom, where there will be four cable ends :-
1. from the Router in the South bedroom;
2. from the parlour;
3. from the study; and
4. from the garage,
... and just plug 'em in.
But I fear that this is FAR too simple to be workable !
I shall also run a telephone cable alongside the Cat6 cable - would it interfere ? Should I keep them separate ?