Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Paula Paul" <Paula AT PaulSoftware.com>]

Hi Gina,

We went through this exercise when we had our first child (who is a year
old this week).

I wanted to be able to check my mail and browse the Internet from other
rooms in our house, since I knew I would not be able to sit at my desk
every day for the first few months after Alex was born.

We wound up running CAT 5 cable to every room in our house (including
Alex's bedroom!).  He'll be the only kid on his block with an always on
Internet connection in his room before he was born. 

We *do* think that sometime when he is older, he will laugh at us for
having wires in the walls as he carries around his wireless device(s),
but we thought the CAT 5 cable was the right thing for us for the next
few years for a couple of reasons:

1) CAT 5 cable can support up to 100MB Ethernet - I think the current
wireless standards support 1MB or 11MB (I think the 11MB is going to be
the most widely used standard), so we can run a 100MB network in the
house (we do now, in the office - downstairs is on an inexpensive 10MB
hub).

2) We live in a subdivision where there are lots of baby monitors and
cordless phones close by.  When we turn on Alex's baby monitor,
sometimes we pick up conversations from the cordless phones next door,
or interference from what we assume is other baby monitors.  So, there's
probably a good possibility that we'd pick up interference on a wireless
network.

3) We already had a hub in our office, connected to a DSL modem, so it
was trivial to pub another hub downstairs and run wire to ports in our
other rooms.  If we went wireless, we'd have to invest in a wireless
base station and wireless cards - more expensive than using our existing
network cards and buying another 10MB hub.

Your builder should be able to get CAT 5 cable if you ask him/her,
otherwise I expect you could find it at any electrical supply store.  It
seems like the incremental cost for you to have the builder pull the CAT
5 wire might be less than the investment in wireless cards and a base
station right now (I think that was ultimately why we did not go
wireless - but someday...).

-Paula

> 
> I'm adding onto my house (new master bedroom and bath) and 
> I'm getting the
> builder to pull speaker wire as part of the job, so I can use 
> my speaker
> set "B" in the bedroom.  It has occurred to me that as long as he's
> pulling wire anyway, he might as well pull the sorts of wire 
> that would be
> useful in setting up a home network.  Notice the vagueness of 
> that last
> bit -- that's the root of my problem.
> The word CAT5 is in my head, but I don't know:
> 
> 1) if that's really what I need
> 2) where I could get such a thing (need fewer than 70 ft. and would
> prefer not to buy tons more than I need)
> 3) if there's something else I'll need along with the CAT5.
>