Wired

Not been up to a lot lately. I've had a phone line to the satellite receiver/DVR running across a doorway for a couple years now. I've been wanting to run a phone line through the wall to get rid of that wire since it runs across at the floor. Some of you might remember I don't like visible wires (see Mission Accomplished). Been living with this because besides the phone wire I need to have wired Internet access for the satellite/DVR. That requires an Ethernet jack, and I didn't have the tools to work with Ethernet cables. So time sort of went by.

Well I ordered some Cat5e crimpers and 8P8C connectors. Then I ordered some jacks and a 110 Punch Down tool along with some Cat5 cable and now I have two Ethernet jacks and a phone jack in the closet. The other end of the cables go to a new outlet with jacks I installed in my home office near the router. I also expanded my home network by adding a 4 port switch. I was out of ports on my router.

The satellite receiver will down load movies from the internet (for a price). I decided to wire two Ethernet ports so that I'd have a back up or extra in case of failure. Running two Cat5 cables through a wall, then the crawl space then up and into another wall is as easy as one. I might use the other jack for a wireless access point since the closet is on the opposite end of the house from my current access point. We'll see. Stay tuned...