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Need a little internet help

Posted on 5/19/23 at 9:22 pm
Posted by jamiegla1
Member since Aug 2016
6931 posts
Posted on 5/19/23 at 9:22 pm
Apologies for being lazy and not googling. I am becoming a tech moron as I get older.

I have AT&T UVerse and whatever equipment that comes with it. Everything is wireless around my house. Sometimes I work from home and wireless just cant keep up with the demand.

I thought I wanted to run an ethernet cable from the router to the one location that I work from. I think that will be changing in the future and may require more than one location. So I started thinking that I may want to have a cable to all of my TVs and possible work spots (maybe 5 total).

What would be the best way to go about this? The router is located in my den and the rooms are all around it in any direction.
Posted by Korkstand
Member since Nov 2003
28684 posts
Posted on 5/19/23 at 10:15 pm to
Are you asking about the physical act of pulling wire, or what gear you should buy after pulling the wire?
Posted by jamiegla1
Member since Aug 2016
6931 posts
Posted on 5/19/23 at 10:26 pm to
what gear I need. Bear with me, im a novice. I can pull and terminate the cables. But I dont know if I should be pulling individual cables from my router to each location. Actually, there arent enough outputs on my router to do this. Is there such a thing as a splitter for ethernet cables or do I need to do individual pulls?
Posted by Korkstand
Member since Nov 2003
28684 posts
Posted on 5/19/23 at 10:47 pm to
quote:

I dont know if I should be pulling individual cables from my router to each location.
Generally yes, you'll be doing "home runs" to each location. Though depending on your floorplan you might do something different.
quote:

Actually, there arent enough outputs on my router to do this. Is there such a thing as a splitter for ethernet cables or do I need to do individual pulls?
So no, you can't "split" an ethernet cable, but what you'll need is a switch which does effectively "split" a single cable. Your router actually has a switch inside of it, that's how it gives you multiple ports. You will need an additional standalone switch though, and you can get these with 4, 8, 16, 24, 32, or more ports. They also come in "dumb" or managed varieties, as well as PoE (power over ethernet) and not. If all you're doing is running data lines to computers and TVs, then a regular dumb non-PoE switch with a sufficient number of ports will do. All you'd do is plug a cable from one of your router's ports into one of the ports of an 8-port switch, for example. Then you can plug devices into the 7 remaining ports and they'll work as if they're plugged right into the router. You could also daisy-chain another switch into a port on the first switch if you had to. So like I mentioned above, and as I've done in my own home, I have run one cable from my network cabinet to the far end of my house, and there I have another switch from which I have run cables to several other devices. This saved me hundreds of feet of cable vs. doing "home runs" to all of them. The only downside is those multiple devices compete for the same 1gbit of bandwidth back to the main switch over that single cable, but that is nowhere close to being a bottleneck at this point and if it is ever then I'd upgrade to 10gbit switches and keep the same cabling in place. But that's another whole thing.

About the PoE, that would be used for powering security cameras or additional wifi access points. This feature is extremely handy, and I will recommend getting a PoE switch. The cost difference is not that much, and it gives you the flexibility to for example install a ceiling-mounted access point near your office to improve the wifi around there. That alone would probably solve your problem without hard-wiring to each room, but that's not a bad thing to do anyway.

Edit: You don't really *need* a PoE switch in order to use another wifi AP, as you can use a PoE injector to send power to a single device. It's just a PoE switch makes it tidy.
This post was edited on 5/19/23 at 11:07 pm
Posted by jamiegla1
Member since Aug 2016
6931 posts
Posted on 5/20/23 at 7:54 am to
Man, thank you so much for the explanation. Now that you mention the PoE, I think that would be a great way to go. Ive got a room upstairs that gets spotty wifi and will eventually need a TV. Im sure the kids would appreciate a wifi access point up there, as well.

Thanks again and have a good one
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