Ethernet

[JetJockey]

Hi all.

I am about to install some Category 6 ethernet cabling (Gigabit network) at home in order to allow me to stream some Hi Def content (when I get it!!) arond the house.

The plan is to send the data from a main storage PC to another PC which would be linked to a projector and/or Plasma, or maybe from a main storage PC to a Scaler with media hub and then to a Projector and/or Plasma.

I was just wondering if anybody out there has been down this road and could offer some tips/hints or downright do's/dont's or must haves for this type of setup.

Any advice would be appreciated from number and types of outlets, to what equipment to actually hook up at the ends ((Hubs) Roku etc, etc, etc).

Many thanks in advance. Gerald.

[ianfretwell]

Hi,

Yes, I already do this. Works fine, I used a Shuttle SK21G in the living room (so only 100Mb rather than gigabit) connected to a server running Windows 2003 in a backroom.

100Mb seems to be able to cope fine, the network card performance isn't being pushed beyond about 15% to do this so you'll have no issues.

Anything specific you wanted to know ?

Ian.

[baldrick]

Originally Posted by JetJockey

Hi all.

I am about to install some Category 6 ethernet cabling (Gigabit network) at home in order to allow me to stream some Hi Def content (when I get it!!) arond the house.

The plan is to send the data from a main storage PC to another PC which would be linked to a projector and/or Plasma, or maybe from a main storage PC to a Scaler with media hub and then to a Projector and/or Plasma.

I was just wondering if anybody out there has been down this road and could offer some tips/hints or downright do's/dont's or must haves for this type of setup.

Any advice would be appreciated from number and types of outlets, to what equipment to actually hook up at the ends ((Hubs) Roku etc, etc, etc).

Many thanks in advance. Gerald.

You can happily run gigabit over Cat5e and it is far more robust than Cat6!!

[JetJockey]

Hi again.

Thanks for the info, very helpful, particularly the bit about 100Mb being more than suitable. I was surprised to here this as I thought HD content at high res (1080i/p, 720i/p) reqired huge amounts of bandwidth in the real world??


Baldrick, why is Cat 5e more robust? does it have better error correction? I have read that Gigabit is not very fault tolerant. Are you talking cable or protocol here?? By the time I drive to return the Cat 6 cable, I will have expended the difference in the cost of Cat 6 over Cat 5e!! Can I use the Cat6cable and wire for CAt 5e? Or is this unsuitable or overkill?


Ian. I was just wondering if I required any particular hubs etc. My setup would include a main (perhaps HTPC) PC in the workshop at ground level. The server I envisage as going into the loft above (Air conditioned). The ground level PC would also be used for day to day tasks such as internet browsing etc. A projector would also be in the workshop a short distance from the two PC's. The Plasma however...... would be in the house quite some distance from the PC's. Would I require another PC in the house just under the Plasma, or could I use some sort of Media Hub? It would be nice to be able to browse the net on the Plasma in the house as well as interface with the home media system.

Thanks. G.

[baldrick]

Originally Posted by JetJockey

Baldrick, why is Cat 5e more robust? does it have better error correction? I have read that Gigabit is not very fault tolerant. Are you talking cable or protocol here?? By the time I drive to return the Cat 6 cable, I will have expended the difference in the cost of Cat 6 over Cat 5e!! Can I use the Cat6cable and wire for CAt 5e? Or is this unsuitable or overkill?

The physical cable is more robust. Cat6 is fragile and requires strict adherence to minium curve radii etc...!

You can order Cat5e from Screwfix, it's about £40 for 200m....

[JetJockey]

Cheers Baldrick

That has saved me some problems!!!


I have just telephoned City electrical supplies. If I drop the Cat6 back they have Cat5e there at £40 for 300mtrs....... Phew!

Right then, now I have to reseach Cat5e connections. It never ends.

just another question though.

Should I be wiring this Cat5e as 100Mb or Gigabit?? Does the HD high res material flow without stuttering on 100Mb as suggested by some?

I need to know as I will be needing to purchase the matching Hubs/routers shortly. Talking of which..... Any recommendations? Netgear, Linksys, Draytek, etc,.... for best performance?

Thanks, Gerald.

[baldrick]

Originally Posted by JetJockey

Cheers Baldrick

That has saved me some problems!!!


I have just telephoned City electrical supplies. If I drop the Cat6 back they have Cat5e there at £40 for 300mtrs....... Phew!

Right then, now I have to reseach Cat5e connections. It never ends.

just another question though.

Should I be wiring this Cat5e as 100Mb or Gigabit?? Does the HD high res material flow without stuttering on 100Mb as suggested by some?

I need to know as I will be needing to purchase the matching Hubs/routers shortly. Talking of which..... Any recommendations? Netgear, Linksys, Draytek, etc,.... for best performance?

Thanks, Gerald.

There are only 2 Cat5e (ethernet) connections, either an RJ45 plug or socket. At the room end you will have wall plates with RJ45 connections and at the 'hub' end you can either terminate with more wall plates or, if you are running a lot of cables take them into a patch panel.

The connecting method for these should be IDC (Krone) punchdown connectors. Buy a proper tool that will insert and trim the excess wire rather than using the cheap plastic DIY ones.

If you wish to terminate any of the cables with RJ45 plugs you will need a crimping tool.

There are actually 2 wiring options 568A and 568B and 2 ways to wire, straight through or cross-over. Cross-over cables would be used to link 2 PCs directly whereas straight through cables are used when connections are going via hubs/switches....

For straight through cables use either A or B at both ends, for cross-over cables use A at one end and B at the other. For a proper structured wiring install you should only need straight through wiring.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/dmfarrior/cat5.htm

[RBJTech]

I would be extremly cautious installing Cat5e for Gigabit networking - for short distances it will be fine, but for anything over 10m you are pushing your luck. IMO, it is better to install Cat 6 now and run 100 Mbit over it (a 100M SWITCH is only £30-£40) upgrading just the SWITCH (and end equipment obviously) to Gigabit as and when you need it. By then gigabit switches will be a lot cheaper and everyone's a winner. By installing cat 5e now it will be cheaper but more expensive (when you have to replace it all) in the long run ...

Just my opinion ... :-)

[JetJockey]

Thanks Baldrick.

I have bought the proper IDC inserter and borrowed a top flight crimper and Network tester. I will wire straight through and use type A. I have terminations but will check out a patch panel. I will "crossover" where necessary using "patch" cables.

I now have to research Network cards and Hubs and switches using "Jumbo Frames" and interrupt coallescing to get 1 Gbit to work at it's best apparently??

Thanks, Gerald.

[RBJTech]

btw - the difference between cat 5e and cat 6 is the frequency in which it is designed to work. Gigabit uses all 4 pairs (8 wires) to make the connection at a higher 'frequency' than 10/100 Mbit (which incidently only uses 2 of the pairs *). The bend radius is generally not an issue for 1 Gigabit networking - but Cat 6 has been designed for up to 10 Gigabit - then the number of twists in the connector, bend radius and 'grouping' all factor into the equation...

Have fun ... :-)

(*) - which actually means you can run 2 x 100 Mbit ethernet connections down one cat 5e/6 wire - very useful and I use that fact a lot in my own installation .. :-)

[ianfretwell]

Hi again,

To answer your question about a media hub I'll just say that I've replaced a Pinnacle Mediacentre 1000 with the Shuttle system simply becauise of the extra functionality a 'proper' PC gives.

With regards the network cabling that has been throwing up quite a bit of discussion I used the following :-

'Mini5' 24 port patch panel
A small 4u wiring cabinet (you could obviously put this in the loft)
DLink DGS-1008D 8port Gigabit switch
DLink DSL-G604T ADSL modem/router with 4port 10/100 switch
Cat5e cabling throughout (3 ports in every room)

Some of the cable runs are 20m+ in length and I have no issue with gigabit running over them. You are right in stating that a gigabit switch that can handle jumbo packets (mine doesn't) will increase performance but probably not in any meaningful way for the uses you are suggesting though.

Ian

[FallingDown]

jet,

i have just completed (well nearly anyways) something very similar to this.

i have wired the speakers behind the plasterboard (makes your house look like falluja but is worth it) and i only have one part still to do. i wired it wup to a wall plate i got and partially rebult with better connectors.

i installed cat6. firstly when i read the web i was bloody terrified about cat6. i had used cat5 a bit in the past. here is something you will need to consider

cat6
i bought a complete box of cat6 for 100 sterling or so from ebay. so you can get it cheap. to be honest i was looking originally at fibre until i found out i would have to sell the family into slavery to afford it! creating cat6 cables is not difficult and every cable i have created i have tested and have had no problem with (excluding the odd rj45 wired upside down!). you should try and get the gold plated rj45 built for cat6 and to be honest with a bit of careful cutting it is simple to do. i had received a load of horror stores about cat6 and a lot of the times if taken from websites scaring people about cat6. i got a good crimper and line tester from ebay. i didnt need a top end job that is going to last years cos i will only be doing dozens of them not thousands. you can get wallplates and the cat6 wall jacks also from the web. i got mine from the US cos anywhere in europe was incredibly expensive at the time. wiring the wall plates is simple. i would recommend that if you need, for example, 20 rj45's buy a pack of 50, cos i made some crimping mistakes...but thats more to do with me being crap at it ...LOL. all of the ones i built have worked at gigabit speeds. so with regards to the terrors of cat6, my comment from experience, is dont believe the hype and fear. exercise some common sense and you will be fine.


gigabit hub

i bought a gigabit hub from amazon and it was around 90 sterling. you will need this cos if you just wire into a normal hub you will downscale the speed to 10/100.

i wired to a wireless hub which is wired to broadband. this is 10/100 but to be honest it does matter until iget huge speeds cheaply with BB.


living room pc

i built my own dual core with 2gb ram connected to the lan. i will be adding a HD-DVD drive at some point i expect. here i made a couple of small blunders. i went for a cool looking pc case rather then a HTPC case for the pc. personally i think this was a mistake. i thought i could quieten a normal pc case with sound dampening from silentpc to the levels of a specially built HTPC case. i dont believe this is really possible, altho i am still open to suggestions! i rekon the pc is quiet but it is not silent. also i am not sure you need dual core but i dont want to be dicking about in the internals every 6 months, i want to built it and get it all working. i also got a quiet PSU not a silent one, you should look at this again as they can be loud. the chip is cooled with a 120mm fan from zantec (i think) and that is truly excellent.i did get a passively cooled nvidia card 6600GT as i recall and the images from that is excellent also. i have standard xp on at the moment, cos i am waiting for 2 things to happen. let me explain.

NAS
i am looking to wire up to the lan a NAS storage device. i have not purchased this bit yet cos i am also waiting for 1TB perpendicular drives. the reason for this is i have hundreds of DVD's i want to get onto disk and since they are about 6 to 9gb currently, i need a shed load of disk and i need it backed up with some type of RAID solution. i am looking at the the Infrant 4 disk NAS but as i said i want the 1tb disks. keep in mind i will also have digital camera and home movie stuff stored here also and itunes. to be honest if i could afford a super fast BB solution and remote storage, i would use that if it was all affordable. that way someone else would be backing up for me!

OS system
dare i say it but i had a look at Vista, and altho i think bill gates has the numbers 666 on his scalp somewhere, i have to say it looked pretty good, particularly the movie management part and that is what i am most interested in and its integration with the NAS. i just didnt want to spend 100 euro on Media centre when i can spend it on Vista in 6 or 9 months or whenever Damien, er, sorry, Bill decides to release it. i will burn all the dvd's to the NAs and play it thru the pc. also i expect the dual core will come more into its own when vista stabilises.


so what else

i bought a sound card from creative to replace my B&W setup, namely because we have a 15 month old and i didnt want him to kill himself topping them over. the sound out of this is very suprising for us as we are not big music listeners, but love our movies.incidently if anyone is looking for a full B&W setup (603s2 and 1000 sub and primare dvd v25..let me know--i do live in ireland tho).

still to gets..
i am looking at a 46 inch sony x2000 but i just dont have that type of cash and to replace my sony vplvw11ht projector..again i would love a 1080p projector...but they are also , like the sony lcd, just too expensive for me at the moment. also want to wire into ceiling and walls, dvi, hdmi plates so i can hide them as well.


so what do i think

the pc to the projector is really good. way way better then i expected. also just copying dvd libraries from disk to HD without converting is fast. obviously i want to link this to the TV when i can afford it and as far i can see it will output the 1080 signals. the sound is way way better then i expected and reemeber i am moving from B&W, so i am a moany git with sound. i have 7.1 installed. i dont expect this part would be good enough for music purists or the anal retentive types but it more then works for us.

we are glad we did this and the missus is way relaxed with this stuff. god bless Swedes! also we have reclaimed our living room. speakers on the wall, projector on the ceiling and a tv and pc and a small subwoofer. thats has replaced amps, dvd player, wires, big speakers, big sub. i am hoping to put the tv on the wall also.

my recommendations is...do it, u wont regret it. i would recommend cat6, you dont want to be replacing anytime soon. u can get a lot of the stuff cheaply on the web. if you decide to build your own pc, remeber that is simple as well but only do that if u are looking for high spec with specialist cards, otherwise, IMHO, you would be hard pressed to beat dell etc on price.

if you need to message me feel free, and good luck to you.

[JetJockey]

Hello again all.

Thanks for the info. I have just been back and changed the Cat5e cable for Cat6 again, just to be futureproofed!! Got a bit of a sideways look from the lads in the shop but there you go.

First job (tomorrow) is to re-route the Telephone line and socket and install the Ethernet cable. This alone should take all day by the time I fit the trunking.

Once I have got this done I will buy the Gigabit switches, NICs and modem router. The prob at the mo seems to be identifying which NICs support "interrupt coalescing" and which Switches support "Jumbo frames".

Within a couple of days I should be able to concentrate on building/sourcing the PC's. Any advice on makes of Switches, NIC's or Specs of PC's/Servers would be welcome.

Many thanks, Gerald.

[JetJockey]

P.S

What sound card did you buy and are you running it into normal powered PC speakers? I assume from your post that you are not using an AV amp with the Creative sound card?

And just for the networking experts out there............. Should this Cat 6 cable of mine be shielded? Because it's not!!

Thanks Gerald.

[FallingDown]

i have unshielded cat6.


the sound card i have is creative. i didnt get the top end card, it was the next step down. this connects to a sub again from creative ..their 7.1 package. i will be changing the speakers at some point tho. i dont have an issue with the sound out of these, but remember i 99% use for movies.

u can run a digital out to a amp if you like from that card.


jet if you are building your own pc...there is a silentpc site that will give you some tips. i have a passive cooled video card 6600gt from nvidia. if you like i will check out the components i got. altho remember my pc is louder then i would like, not too loud but not silent.