[geeks] Home Network (Was: Wireless Ethernet)

[Sammy Ominsky]

Ken Hansen wrote:

> No, you should have tied a thread to the phone cord, pulled it down,
> attached the Cat5 *and* phone cord, and pulled it back! Heck, could even add
> a string to the bundle and leave it in place for the next "upgrade"...


Heh. Does the phone line running on the unused pair have much effect on
data transmission? I can't tell if it does. I ran the same thing to the
addition on the side of the house that didn't have a phone line. 

I'm actually considering replacing all the voice lines in the house with
similar combined voice/data over cat5. Apparently there was some sort of
business int he house before, and the phone lines are all 25-pair cat3,
running from  two central boxes on opposite sides of the house. It's all
very well done, but if I want data ports in the kids' rooms, I'll have
to replace it.

My plan is something like this:

(based on what I started doing already)

voice_______________|central box|
                       | | | | 
                       | | | | (voice lines)
                       | | | | 
DSL_________________|patch panel|______|modem|____|firewall|__|AUI
MAU|__(DMZ)
                       | | | |                        |
                       | | | |                        |     
                       | | | | (data lines)           |    
                       | | | |                      |switch|
                       | | | |______________________||||||||_
                       \ \ \________________________/// \\\\_
                        \ \_________________________//   \\\_   (rest of
network)
                         \__________________________/     \\_
                                                           \_

Then from the patch panel, I would run combined lines up to the various
rooms. Is this a bad idea for any reason? I know that optimally, the
voice and data should be seperate, but this isn't a multi-billion$$$
corporate office, and my wife/kids' web surfing isn't mission critical.

---sambo