How to Wire Your House With Cat-5 (or 6) For Ethernet Networking

Step 7 Connecting to the Internet

Now that we've got this fancy network, we want to connect it to the internet right?

First the cable modem setup. Since I moved my cable modem from my second bedroom (office) to the distribution room I needed to change the way my cable was split. Rather than the main cable into the house being split 3 ways I split things a little differently. I split the incoming cable with a 3-way splitter first. 1 to the main TV, 1 to the 2-way splitter for TV in the bedrooms and the other into the cable modem. I connected the splitters using a male-male barrel connector.

Now that the cable modem is in the right place we can continue with our network setup. Depending on your internet provider some of this setup may vary. I'm going to discuss the specifics of my environment only. I'll provide tips for others when possible.

From the cable modem ethernet port I plugged into the "Untrusted" port on my router/firewall. From the "Trusted" port, I connected to the first switch port on my switch. If your switch has one, plug into the port labeled "Uplink" instead. Depending on the switch or cable modem and or router, you may need (or already have) crossover cables for these connections. With my router/firewall set up as a DHCP server I can now provide each port access to the internet. In addition my entire network is protected from outside access by the firewall.

Although it is not integral to this instructable, I also plugged a wireless access point into my switch so that I can have wireless access as well. Since my wireless is both encrypted and has MAC filtering I feel comfortable with it on the "trusted" side of my firewall. If for some reason I wanted to provide open wireless access but still protect my network I would need a different configuration of connections. I won't go into detail about these changes but I wanted to note them depending on what your network goals are and how they might incorporate wireless access.

In summary, my firewall receives my single, static IP from my ISP cable modem. It also acts as a router and provides DHCP IP addresses to all other hosts on my private network via the switch and cabling we just installed.

What the hell do we do with it now?!? NEXT!

Comments

[ColdScorpion]

Hey Rogue Agent, you rack look great.  You might want to reconsider not cleaning up the cable web. As you probably know, each one of those "splits" cuts the power and signal quality. That decrease will hurt the boxes as they try to suck the power/signal they require ending short themselves out. I don't bout you but I hate to wait in line at my cable office to trade a box in or to waste my day waiting for a cable tech. I went thru three boxes before I figure it out and bought a Levitron 8 cable splitter with all port power pass for around $25. My mother in law was having similar issues. She went thru 17 cable boxes in ten months each time a cable tech came out and just replaced the boxes, When she finally ask me to look at it, I pull out 11 splitters for a 4 bedroom house! I fix her up the same way, and she hasn't had one problem since. She so happy that I now have to be present anytime the cable tech comes.

[bogdan_bartos]

You have a 10/100Mbps network at home. That is not very high speed nowadays when you have the 1 Gbps and 10Gbps networks. Besides that, wireless is pretty secure. I am using WPA2-AES (WPA2-Enterprise) with RADIUS authentication on 802.11n that is also faster than 10/100Mbps and it' VERY secure. It is the industry standard nowadays. You could think again and look at the wireless solution.

Also, you can use a Linux router and you can incorporate many of your solutions in it including the routing function, RADIUS, firewall, access list policies and you can go way beyond that!!! Also, if you don't have multiple networks that you have to trunk that is quite uncommon in a home environment setup, you don't even need CISCO. There are plenty of switches out there cheaper that know Gigabit technology and also know 802.11q, STP and more at a fraction of the CISCO cost.

As for the router, Linux knows how to handle 802.11q, so VLANs are not a problem and you can easily route RIP, OSPF and BGP, but again, I don't see the point at home...

These are just few of the improvements I would do, but besides that CAT5/6 is great for speed and security and it has it's very own purpose where it's installed.

[Rogue Agent]

10/100 is perfectly fine for nearly all home uses.  Yes, I'd prefer gigabit.  But while you berate me for using expensive Cisco equipment, I had one of those cheapo gigabit switches and it performed WORSE than my Cisco 10/100 switch.  They may link up at gigabit, but they don't even burst to actual gigabit speed.  They don't have the backplane bandwidth. 

And again, while you berate me for using Cisco because you think it is expensive and overkill (I got mine for free), you are the one using RADIUS in a home environment and talking about 802.1q.  Talk about overkill.  I guarantee no information you have is that important (regardless of how important you already think you are).

Oh, and a Linux router that you build, would be a downgrade from the netscreen.  I'll take a commercial solution over a cobbled together solution anyday.   

[sturmey]

Smoothwall is an enterprise solution used in many businesses including the one that I manage. Generally you want a firewall to work and be invisible, and as long as you have decent hardware, the firmware/software is the weak point. I think both have their place, smoothwall is not a bad option when compared to the firewall you have used.

Thanks for a nice instructable.

[Grooby]

If you have an old computer that you aren’t using or able to get one low specs try making file wall with that all you need is some network cards and you have you own firewall. Smooth Wall allows you to delegate what trust level you want for different parts of network.

 See http://www.smoothwall.org/

[bogdan_bartos]

I also forgot to give you some warnings related to Gigabit and coaxial. I pulled a lot of CAT5 in my hose that were running nearby a coax for the modem. The modem was giving me Internet and phone that is VoIP. When I was transferring big amounts of data, the phone was not working and I needed a month to figure out why. Even if the coax cable is shielded, it still interferes with the EM signal from the CAT5.

However, the Internet was fine even if the speed was affected because 99% of the stuff out there is based on TCP, and it is corrected if the packets get dropped or corrupt, but VoIP is UDP and if the packet gets lost, it lost for ever, so that's the reason my phone was dying every time.

The solution was to move the coax line for the phone elsewhere in the house where I don't have CAT5, so the problem got solved. If you ever run CAT5/6 nearby coax, think of what I told you! It will save you a LOT of grief and time!

And getting back to the CAT5 idea. This is NOT bad, but you could install shielded cable because the technology changes fast and like that you could accommodate a better technology into the close future. So, I would recommend CAT7. Like that, you avoid interference and you can jump to the next technology.

Cheers!

[Kagehi]

Actually, you are better off here splitting by two *then* splitting three for all your other connections, especially in an older house. With my connection it was rigged like you have here, and they had to both replace the drop line to the house **and** change the split point, to get a good solid signal. I still lose some because 1) I also have a TV in the same room as the computer, so that adds another split, and 2) the wiring is an older, thinner, type of coax in the walls. Both lose additional signal for me. But, the #1 problem that was causing my modem to disconnect a lot seemed to be a slightly fishy drop, and the way the split was done where it came in, since it went through the same sort of mess you have there.

Hmm. You might also note that the little connectors, like you have between the two, may be a bad idea too, assuming they work like cabling. Besides making the whole mess hard to shove back into the wall, anything less than 6 inches causes signal reflection, at least in cables, which mucks with the signal too. I would presume that those short connectors "may" do something similar, but I could be wrong. It may not hurt your TV much, but your cable box, if you have one, is basically a cable modem + TV tuner, and you might be adding additional noise there, which could muck with them working right as well.