No matter if you choose a wired or wireless network, planning and flexibility are the keys in getting a sucessful installtion that you will be happy with. Read the tutorial at TomsHardware.
Building a Home Network from Scratch
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
i wish they had a printer fridnly version… such a pain to read.
This article is for a home network? The Agilent Wirescope 350 cable tester is over $5,000 & the 19 inch rack was fastened to the cement floor. The typical home network will never require you to hire Bill CableRunner to setup & test your network. It looks like THG is a bit out of touch with the commom man.
THG is in the hot seat right now anyway for some alleged misconduct at the Million Man Lan (MML2).
http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=243
Now there talking about a home network that few can afford. Sounds about right.
This isn’t the firts time THG gets itself involved in controversy, does anyone remember the THG vs. HardOCP.com battle because HardOCP reported that ATI was cheating in quake3 benchmarks after being tipped about this by nvidia.
Maybe I missed the point… but: What is supposed to be housed in a ceiling tall 19″ in a regular residential house, besides a Switch and a Router + Back-up-Server, if at all..? I know people who LANed their house, but this still doesn’t require a 19″ (read: 16+ port) switch, not to mention a fixed industry style rack. I think THG lost it with this article somewhere inbetween… maybe someone got exicted over his LAN-fetish-fantasies just a bit too much… 🙂
Quite the overkill, is he getting a hardware commission? I just finished the same general task using the Leviton home network components from good old Home Depo. Much simpler and a lot less bucks. I ended up running cat 5e to 12 access points, 6 on each floor. Each access point has 1 phone jack and 1 LAN connection using the modular Leviton jacks. Since you only need 2 pairs for the LAN anyway, I just ran 1 cable to each access port and split 2 pairs for phone and 2 pairs for the network. The Leviton wall mounted wiring box holds my DSL modem, Linksys router and all the wiring. I spent about $450 for the whole thing and it is not a butt ugly hunk of hardware in the middle of the room either…
Step 1. Buy a Mac
Step 2. Buy an AirPort Extreme Base Station
Step 3. There is no Step 3… there is no Step 3! (minus some minor configuration)
“Step 1. Buy a Mac
Step 2. Buy an AirPort Extreme Base Station
Step 3. There is no Step 3… there is no Step 3! (minus some minor configuration)”
SO simple in fact, you don’t even need a second computer!
I agree, it’s major overkill! I was shocked when I read the article. I’m like, this is for a house??
A lot of busnesses aren’t even networked that well!!! lol
And my network here cost around $50 for four computers. Saved money by using a 486 as a Linux based router…
i still like anandtech, but i guess the economy and depressed tech industry leaves little for them to write.
BUT THAT’S WHY I VISIT OS NEWS!!!!
No one recommends Toms for anything but fud. Anand is still probably the best tech website but they don’t seem to write on hardly anything lately and when they do its sporadic at best. Hardocp is decent but too kiddish in its reach, amdzone is biased as all hell, overclockers.com has great equipment reviews but needs to stop preaching occasionally. It seems like the only balanced review site anymore is storagereview! lol
I have cable between my desktop boxes and wireless for my laptop. And I didn’t buy an expensive basestation, I got a wireless nic capable of hostap mode, put it in a freebsd machine and made it a bridge between wireless hosts and the rest of my lan.
I think that if more OSNews readers commented on this story we woud find that most of them have found very inexpensive and effective networking options for their homes and even offices. I feel the author has too much money and likes to tell people about it. WHat he neglected to say was that he was writing the article on a 17″ MACspensive laptop in his Ferrari.