Networking my home

[akodiakbear]

Hi I am a current Networking student and recently got the idea of networking my home. I was having trouble figuring out what would be the best setup for me. My current setup is this: My computer room doesn't have a coaxial jack so when the cable company installed the internet the drilled a hole through the floor and ran a cable from the basement into my computer room to hook up the modem. So in my computer room I have a modem hooked up to a dual band wireless-n router.
What I want to do with this is get the modem into the basement where the cable enters the house, and have my router in the computer room for connection to that computer and as a WAP. I also want to hardwire an ethernet jack to one of my bedrooms where I have another computer(currently using wireless) and my xbox(possibly running two wires and having a double jack).
Should I purchase any other networking hardware, like a switch or patch panel to make this work?

 

[RealBeast]

An inexpensive switch would do the job, unless you don't get adequate wireless coverage and want it down in the basement too.

In that case you can get another router and configure it as a WAP and also use its 4 LAN ports as a wired switch. Just make sure to turn off DHCP in the router that is only acting as a WAP and let the other router do all the DHCP assignment.

Also if you add a second router as a WAP use two different radio channels than the upstairs unit uses -- you can select the channels in one of the router configuration pages.

 

[akodiakbear]

basically I want everything down in the basement. I was a little worried about losing wireless quality down in the basement. Do you think I would have a problem with that with a Cisco E2500?

If not I was just going to get a patch panel and run all the cables from the router to rj-45 jacks in the walls where I need them.

If I wanted to expand to more than 4 outlets in the future, do I just get a small cheap wired switch and hook it up to one of the ports on the router?

 

[RealBeast]

The E2500 should work fine, but you can always add another router configured as an AP upstairs and connected to the downstairs router by a CAT 5e cable if you find that your signal is too weak anywhere.

Yes, a simple switch works fine to expand the 4 LAN ports, just attach one of the LAN outlets to any of the switch ports and as long as your DHCP server has enough addresses allowed it will work just like attaching to one of the router ports for all devices on the switch (the switch itself does not take an ip address).

 

[akodiakbear]

Thanks for the help!

Yeah I was just in the router settings the other day and I think I have 50 addresses allowable right now, so that shouldn't be a problem.

By chance do you know of any particular punch-down tools that are cheap and reliable?

edit : oh and is there a way to test the quality of my wireless signal?

 

[akodiakbear]

Best answer selected by akodiakbear.