Sending two LANs over a single Ethernet cable?

[LearnerNet]

Hi,

I'm moving to a new house soon and the telephone line enters the building at the basement level.

My VDSL subscription will include both Internet, and TV. The supplied router then makes them available via two separate ports with different address ranges. LAN cables then connect to the computers and TV decoder from these ports.

In the house there is a single Ethernet cable already running through the walls from the basement to the lounge on the ground floor. I want to consolidate both the Internet and TV data onto this cable and then split it apart again at the other side to go to a TV decoder and a wifi router.

I don't want the VDSL router to be in the lounge as I will also have a TV decoder and Internet connection in the basement.

I am renting the property so I can't run new cables through the walls etc.

What is the best way to achieve my goal please?

Don't worry about using technical terminology, I can pick that apart, I just want to get my head around what components I should use to get the job done.

Thanks for any help!

 

[john-b691]

Are you sure it really runs the TV over ethernet, not sure I have seen that before.

Assuming it really is ethernet and the IP address blocks are really separate your first option is to just plug it all together and hope it works. You would need a couple of cheap switch one for each end of the cable. Just plug both outlet from the router into the switch. Not the best design but it works because the subnets do not know the other exists.

The way to do it in a more professional method is going to cost some money. You will need switches that support vlans as well as 802.1q trunk ports. The cabling is exactly the same as the previous method. In this case you define the ports going to the tv network as one vlan and the one going to the data as a different one. You put both vlans on the connection between the switches. This uses vlan tagging to keep the data separate even though it still all passes over the same cable between the switches.

 

[LearnerNet]

Are you sure it really runs the TV over ethernet

I'm fairly sure, but I'll double check - I know that if I don't have TV then a configuration change on the VDSL modem will allow me to repurpose the TV ports as part of the internet LAN.

You would need a couple of cheap switch one for each end of the cable. Just plug both outlet from the router into the switch.

This is what I was thinking, but I know I've been bitten in the past by assuming something was so simple, and then realising that I missed something important, hence this thread...

The way to do it in a more professional method is going to cost some money. You will need switches that support vlans as well as 802.1q trunk ports. The cabling is exactly the same as the previous method. In this case you define the ports going to the tv network as one vlan and the one going to the data as a different one. You put both vlans on the connection between the switches. This uses vlan tagging to keep the data separate even though it still all passes over the same cable between the switches.

Thanks very much - this is the kind of advice I was looking for, I'll look into switches that meet these specs, and see if this is a feasible solution. I'd rather have something right that is guaranteed to work, rather than something that's hacked together on a wing and a prayer.