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Network advice

JT.

JT.

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Joined
Jul 24, 2011
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Location
North West UK
Any networking guys on here who could give me some advice?

I've run a cat5 cable from my router, out through the wall, around the outside of my house, then into my son's room. We installed a network socket in his room and he plugs his pc into that socket. This all works fine.

I need a second socket now on the opposite side of his room. The cable routed around the outside of the house passes where this new socket needs to be. Is it technically possible to take a spur off that network cable to a new socket location, or is that simply not how networking works?

If not, can I run a cable from the existing socket to the new location, whilst leaving the other socket active (i.e. in total, two devices might be plugged in simultaneously, one in each socket) or does each socket need its own wire?
 
Need to run another wire from router, or put a small switch in between the rooms/additional socket
 
They have different models for different uses and speeds. Some are WiFi others are just network socket into them. They use the existing house earth wire to transmit signal so no cabling necessary. I've been using them for maybe 10 years now.
 
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If I were you I would get a cheap Ethernet switch for under £10 like this


Plug that into your existing socket and then you have 5 ethernet sockets available. Plug whatever you had before into one socket, and plug a long Ethernet cable into another of the sockets and run it round to the other side of the room to wherever it is needed. You could even put another switch on the end of that so you have another five Ethernet sockets there as well.
 
I'd run another cable most routers have 4 sockets in the back for cabling if not grab a switch like everyone said above

If you spur I'll kill the speed
 
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Mfresh said:
If I were you I would get a cheap Ethernet switch for under £10 like this


Plug that into your existing socket and then you have 5 ethernet sockets available. Plug whatever you had before into one socket, and plug a long Ethernet cable into another of the sockets and run it round to the other side of the room to wherever it is needed. You could even put another switch on the end of that so you have another five Ethernet sockets there as well.
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This is the easiest solution - connect an unmanaged switch to the current socket and run a cable from the switch internally to the other side of the room. We have Cat 5 to every room of the house + outside to the pinball building and I have switches in most of them. With the bandwidth of cat 5 theres not much point in running a second cat 5 from the router externally unless routing a wire internally is a massive problem.

If you wanted to run cat 5 to more rooms in the future and you don’t have enough ports on the router, you can always plug the router directly into a switch and then run cables from the switch to the other rooms. My router is connected to an 8 port switch which all the other rooms of the house are connected into. Theres no issue with having more than one switch between any given device and the router.

You could even get a wifi access point to connect to the switch so your son has his own dedicated wifi network with great signal. I‘ve done this in our bedroom and in the pinball building although unless you want to go the mesh route I’d suggest setting up under different SSIDs.
 
Big Phil said:
Can you do it through the electric sockets? I have WAPS plugged in like this. One at the router and one in the room where I want wifi.

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Powerline adapters can work ok depending on the circuits in your house, but they will never perform as well as running cat5 cables. Running cat5 can be a proper hassle, so there's definitely a use case for powerline adapters - but if there's already cat5 to the room you'd be crazy to use a powerline adapter on the other side of the room.
 
I use powerline sockets in my garage,to extend the wi-fi as it's 80ft away from the house and my wi-fi does not reach that far
 
JustLikeMe said:
Powerline adapters can work ok depending on the circuits in your house, but they will never perform as well as running cat5 cables. Running cat5 can be a proper hassle, so there's definitely a use case for powerline adapters - but if there's already cat5 to the room you'd be crazy to use a powerline adapter on the other side of the room.
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Yeah, I've had these before and they were no good for my son's gaming. I'm erring towards a second cable around the outside of the house, as that's easier than trying to route one behind walls or skirting board inside his room.
 
I finally wired up my whole house and whilst the power lines will get you so far, they are night and day for heavy data sharing vs dedicated cables that can really do it better.
 
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JT. said:
Yeah, I've had these before and they were no good for my son's gaming. I'm erring towards a second cable around the outside of the house, as that's easier than trying to route one behind walls or skirting board inside his room.
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I’ve run cables around the top of skirting boards with something similar to these. Assuming the cable colour matches the skirting board it looks neat.


You can also get cable trunking for skirting boards. Might be worth investigating.
 
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