Retrofitted ethernet into a 100 yr old

[giddonah]

I originally posted this on a computer forum. I didn't get much of a reaction out of them. :?



Ok. There was this 100 year old house that had a couple of computers that needed an internet connection. I'm not dumb (most of the time). I'm adventurous. I'm handy. I got thinking. How great would it be if the house was hard wired for a network? Yeah, easier said than done in a house with plaster walls. Oh well. Nothing ventured...



I started by moving the cable modem from the second floor office to the basement (I had to make a new catv line into the basement) (damn, forgot to put that tool in my picture...). I mounted it to the side of the exposed floor joist.

http://users.rcn.com/green320/images/Cable%20modem.jpg

Next to that I mounted the router (Netgear 614v2).

http://users.rcn.com/green320/images/Router3.jpg

The easy line was the one for the first floor. It was a whole 10ft from the router, through one wall to the outlet on the other side.

http://users.rcn.com/green320/images/Wall%20outlet2.jpg

(yeah, the lighting sucks, but I didn't have a flash) Ok, so that's the easy one. The other three lines run from the basement to the attic through a wall that runs from the basement to the attic. This is the hardest part. I ran a flat tape (damn, didn't photograph that either, anyway, you can get it in the electrical dept of Home Depot) through the wall. I needed to get a string the entire length of the wall with which to pull the wires up from the basement. I started in the attic where the top of the wall was actually open and I could just drop down the wall. I hit something about 10 ft down. This is where the destruction started. I had to break through the plaster to find what the hell was impeeding the tape. I found a damn beam running horizontally across the wall even with the second floor. I cut a channel in the side of it with a chisel to make room for the wires:

http://users.rcn.com/green320/images/Stairway2.jpg

Ok, so I kept going down, and hit something else in the middle of the first floor section of the wall. This time, it was what's called a "cat". It's a 2x4 that runs diagonally through a wall to keep it from shifting. I cut another channel.

http://users.rcn.com/green320/images/Stairway1.jpg

Now, I got down to the basement, but there was tons of plaster in the way. I opened a hole in the wall and fished about 10 lbs. of plaster pieces out of the wall that was in the way of the tape. Now, I had a string going from the basement to the attic.

http://users.rcn.com/green320/images/Wires%20at%20bottom.jpg

I figured, since I was running cat5, it wasn't much more work to just run cat3 for phone lines while I was at it. I figured I'd need about 70ft of cables. I pulled out two lengths each of both the cat5 and cat3. I tied them, and the ends of the spools to the string. I pulled all six wires up, feeding them around the two aforementioned obstacles along the way. I got them into the attic:

http://users.rcn.com/green320/images/Wires%20top.jpg

This was a small victory. Now, I had to get one wire down from the attic into the second floor office. Basically, the same thing, cut a hole in the plaster, find the big ass piece of wood in the way, cut a hole, feed the tape and tie string to the end...

http://users.rcn.com/green320/images/Feeding3.jpg

After all that again, I got a pair of cat5/cat3 down from the attic into the second floor office and terminated.

http://users.rcn.com/green320/images/Wall%20outlet1.jpg

Now, the first line went with no problems. This second line though, didn't work. I re-terminated the outlet, and recrimped the jack at the router end, and it worked. Another small victory. Two computers now up and running. Next was the third line. Same thing again, snake down to a hole in the wall, and terminate. This time it didn't work, no matter how many times I recrimped and reterminated. That was when I posted about testing the lines. I got a tester, and found out the last two cables both were majorly shorted. Crap. I had to run two new cat5's from the basement. I ran them one at a time, taping the end of the spool to the end of the bad cable and pulled them through the wall. Two new lines in the attic. I tested them at this point, and both were perfect. I ran the thrid line down the wall and terminated it and tested it with my laptop. Three computers online. I'm a damn genius. This was a major victory. The fourth line will come later, but it's there, and will take between 1 and 3 hrs to install.



Now, you may be asking why go through all this instead of just using a wireless router? Shut up. I don't care about your dumb questions. Ok, it would have worked, but I'm not going to be there to manage the thing, so I needed something that wouldn't need maintaining. I'd have to secure the thing, and every time someone wanted to connect, I'd have to deal with their dumb questions and go fix it for them. Screw that. Plus, I'd worry about people war driving into it. Right now it's just for internet, but in the future, it might be used for serious networking, and the extra bandwidth will be nice. Plus, I just wanted to do it, so there.



Biggest problem: Terminating that damn thing at the wall outlet. The dust cap is supposed to snap down or something, but I could never get it to go down all the way. I'd test the line, and only see half the wires connect until I kept pressing on it and finally I'd get all the wires to make contact. There has to be a better way, but at least it works.



Trickiest step: The directions for crimping the rj45 thing says to strip the wires. Then you have to get each of the 8 wires to slide into the right hole on the connector. Sometimes two wires would slip in the same hole. It took forever to do it that way. Don't strip them. Just slip them in the connector with the insulation on. When you crimp it, the metal things on the end penetrate the insulation and it works fine.



Best part: Taking a picture of all my tools (except the rj6 compression tool, and the 20' flat tape) with the notebook on DevH's homepage (notice the huge pile of plaster just to the left of the computer):

http://users.rcn.com/green320/images/Tools.jpg



Would I do it again? I can't wait.

[Rich]

haha.. I love remodeling (I'm lying) something small always turns into a huge ordeal.

[Dragon]

And then some jerk like me comes along and points out that going wireless for a network isn't that hard or expensive these days.

:wink:

[grumpydasmurf]

wireless?

[giddonah]

Wireless may have it's advantages, but it also has disadvantages which to me make the installation of wires more appropriate. You might have missed that paragraph. Wireless standards are constantly changing. Even the best wireless (and I mean microwave transmission costing thousands) can't even come close to the bandwidth of gigabit ethernet. For internet access it's not a problem, but for lan connections it's 10x faster. SuperG can get up to 104Mb/s, while gigbit ethernet is 1000Mb/s. Every computer needs a wireless card, and if you want superG those cards aren't cheap. Ever hear of war driving? That's where a hacker drives around in a car with a laptop looking for wireless networks to access. Wired networks are much, much easier to maintain. I can give help over the phone to reconnect when the internet connection drops. Who's going to set up all the computers to connect to the network? Who's going to handle the problems? And now, the rooms we're going to rent out have ethernet in the wall. How many rooms for rent come with internet access?

Yeah, could have gone wireless. I don't think it's worth it though. Now that I know how to do what I did, I can wire a house in a day. In the long run, it's easier and cheaper to wire the house than deal with wireless, no matter how good the marketing is for wireless :wink:

[giddonah]

grumpy- wireless is "the thing" in networking these days. It's using radio waves to connect to a networking device instead of wires. It has it's uses, but it also has it's limitations. I'm a computer person. I plan on networking every house I get my hands on.

[Vector]

Had I gone through all of that work to run those lines, I would probably have picked an interior wall with a path from the basement to the attic and run conduit (probably actually just Sch 40 pipe). It would involve a bit more plaster patching, but a lot less wire pulling headaches, and would allow for future wires without re-opening the walls. I find that one large plaster patch takes me no more time that two or three small ones.

I've thought about doing just that in my current 80-yr-old house (actually know exactly where I would run it), but it's just not really worth it. I do run an 802.11g wireless for my laptop. Once we move out and rent both floors (duplex), I might keep some kind of broadband and a wireless in place and offer it as a perk to the renters (I have an office in the basement I'll probably keep, so I'll want something anyhow).

The house I'm moving into, which is about 110 years old will have a full structured wiring system in place, all in conduit (plastic flex) to make future expansion/alterations easy. There are rewards to gutting a house down to the studs :)

[giddonah]

Last weekend we decided to have more connections on the second floor so I ran two more sets of lines. The string I left there let me do it in about 15 minutes. I'll now have more than enough lines. During the latest bathroom tear-down we uncovered a pipe that ran to the basement which offers a better (roomier) place to run wires. I think I'll plaster those holes now (with some steel plates over the beams so nails don't get put through the wires). For the future, I can run lines up this new column we found. I think we're going to run four 12/2's up and put the second floor on three new circuits with the fourth for the central air we plan on putting in the attic.

That wall we used is an interior wall, but running a conduit sounds like a good idea. I'll look into doing that in the new column we found, I like that idea.

[grumpydasmurf]

You might have missed that paragraph.

As a rule I don't read long posts.

[giddonah]

Then you limit yourself to headlines and miss the meat.

[Vector]

That wall we used is an interior wall, but running a conduit sounds like a good idea. I'll look into doing that in the new column we found, I like that idea.

We used to do this for some buliders when we wired new homes. A 2" Sch 40 PVC tube from the basement to the attic for future expansion (we didn't run any wires in it at install).

I always wished we would sub it out to the plumbers, because unless you do it all the time, lining up a 2" PVC tube over two stories is a pain sometimes. Plumbers can do it in their sleep. We also didn't really have the right tools. A recip saw with a wood blade generally makes a mess of cutting DWV pipe.

You can bet I'm going to do it in my new (old) house though.

[rgramjet]

Hey G,
Nice job! Cat 5e is fun and easy to play with.

Pretty soon you'll be ready to do a multi-room stereo system with keypads, 7.1 surround sound theater location with semi flexible 7/8" diameter, Mini-HR composite video cable running to the projector, remote control drop down screen with a color Pronto remote system.

We recently did an install in Georgetown where every room was papered with irreplaceable silkscreened murals or trompe loie'l (sp). And we installed a system like the one described above. Plasmas in the bedrooms, projector in the basement theater and a Meridian digital multizone system providing the sound.....in a word, AWESOME!

The client, an attorney, wanted keypad locations and in wall speaker locations to coincide with the design of the paper. There is nothing as nerve rattling as blind cutting into decorated plaster....the stud finder worked about 1/3 of the time....otherwise we had to measure 25x and roll the dice.

During breaks or to relax, we would run his cat 5e for his ethernet. :-)

[giddonah]

that sounds awesome. I think setting something like that up would be fun, but I'd have problems not being insanely jealous.