After years painful struggle with wireless network, here is how I convert the network to wired through walls.

I bought a whole box of CAT6 horizontal cable for $80 online, about 500ft. I did bad estimate job. A lot of cable leftovers. I also bought a box of 20 CAT-6 RJ-45 plugs $20, some low-voltage mounting brackets $3 each, and face plates $3 each from Homedepot. The CAT-6 keystone jacks were not available at the store, so had to order them online, $6 each.

1. Make a hole on the "outside" wall. There is insulation material inside.

2. Take out the baseboard. Make a hole below the baseboard line.

3. Fish a string through the holes. Pull the cable up. In my case, I also pull a coax cable for the TV.

4. Run the cables along the baseboard.

5. Make another hole on the "outside" wall and below the baseboard line.

6. Fish a string through the holes. Pull the cables up.

7. Mount the mounting bracket.

8. Connect the keystone jack.

9. Attach the face plate.

10. Do the similar things for the other end. At the other end, I use a 6 hole face plate as connectors to the hub.

11. Find a place on the inside drywall, that there is no stub between the ceiling and the floor.

12. Climb up to the attic. Find the location of the wall. Measure the necessary length.

13. Make a hole on the wall.

14. Mark the horizontal stub near the ceiling and make a hole right below it. Cut the hole all to the ceiling and drill a hole on the ceiling to the roof, avoid the stub.

15. Climb up to the attic. Fish a string through the holes, all the way to the baseboard hole. Need two people and walkie-talkies.

16. Pull the cable up in the attic.

17. Do similar things on the other walls in the other rooms.

18. Fish the cables down from attic.

19. Mount brackets. Make keystone jacks. And attach face plates.

20. Patch the ceiling holes. Paint the walls and install baseboards.

21. Make patch cables. Since my network runs mostly horizontal, I use T568B termination for all the jacks and plugs (same color sequence as any store-bought cat-5 straight-through patch cable).

22. Disable wireless function in the router, forget the wireless da vinci codes, turn off the silly computer firewall, or maybe return the wireless router and buy a good cheap 1G-bit wired only router/switch for $50.

23.Now I can browse the Internet at maximum speed, watch high-definition movies on my network without pauses, use my microwave, cordless home phone, and garage door without fear. Probably I can live longer without wireless radiation pollution, or maybe sell my house at a little bit higher price. ;)

 

One sad sad thing is the "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet" came with my HP laptop. It in fact does not support speed at 1000Mb. The best it can do is 100Mb Full Duplex. What a scam! I need to look for a cheap gigabit PCMCIA card now.

2009-10-28