What's needed for new wired network

Technology
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Dear all

Can someone double check my thinking as I try to sort out network probs. Sorry this is long – I’m mindful of the recent advice to provide accurate info on tech probs!

I’m trying to put together a mini network in the study, where we have:

  • 2 user iMacs [self and Mrs W]
  • 1 older i Mac which is supposed to act as fileserver / backup etc
  • Win laptop used occasionally
  • 3 printers [duplex laser, large format colour inkjet, desktop inkjet for standby]

For internet access we have wifi from the Orange Livebox [Livebox 4], which is hard wired in the living room – the other side of three walls. Moving it isn’t an option because the fibre optic “trunk” is in the building’s rising main on the other side of the wall.

The wifi also links to users to the fileserver – but it is slow, especially with Photoshop files which are often c 100 MB.

All the printers have Ethernet capability but are currently used with USB, which is sluggish to say the least [ particularly long docs or A3 images].

So what I want to do is connect all the kit in the study with a wired Ethernet, and just use the wifi from the two user Macs for internet access.

A while back a well-meaning techie advised us to buy a range extender. Netgear Nighthawk EX7000, which has 4 Ethernet ports as well as the dual band wifi. Great! we thought. Connect the computers by wifi and plug the printers into the ports.

Sadly, it doesn’t work. Specifically it does not sustain the wifi connection with the Livebox on either the 2.4 or 5GHz bands. It will connect for say, half a minute and then fail. Same with or without WPS, with or without factory reset and all the other “fixes” suggested by Netgear etc.

Wifi to / from my Mac is usually OK unless and until I’m downloading HD video, when it sometimes stumbles. But speeds are very patchy, considering it’s supposed to be an 802ac connection to Orange’s fastest fibre [I think that’s somewhere about 100M].

The building is 1970s concrete – the walls are more than 300mm thick, and full of re-bar, so we suspect that’s the reason.

Macs can happily switch from wifi to wired networks with one mouse click. So working assumption is to separate internet and local services on wire-less and -ed. So I think I need:

A basic Ethernet router to will handle the IP, DHCP and other gubbins – all suggestions grat rec –
That will connect the server and my legacy 8 port Netgear switch [GS-108]
Cat 6 cables from each device to the switch – numerous legacy items from 2m to 10m, all top quality.

What if anything else do I need to do / know?

Apologies for the length, and TIA for anyone who can give me even 30sec info / advice.

Ken

1 Like
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Can you get an ethernet lead from the router to the study? If you can then it is easy with just a network switch 8 or 16 port in the study.

Can a lead be run directly or perhaps upwards into the room/attic above then drop down into the study? This way your router can do the DHCP.

The netgear GS-108 is gigabit which is a good start plus the Cat6 patch leads should all help.

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The Livebox already handles “the IP, DHCP and other gubbins”. You do not need another basic Ethernet router.
If you can’t get the ethernet cables through the walls, can you loop them out and in through small holes in the window frames or through the door frames?

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Thanks, Mat and Elsie

Cabling back to the Orange box was one of my first thoughts. But the run would be >40ft with two or three walls en route, so not sure it’s feasible. No attics or ceiling voids – that’s another snag with 70s concrete construction.

The outside wall of the living room has 8m of sliding glass window onto the balcony – and I can’t imagine the syndic approving cabling outside the walls. [We are in a large résidence park which takes pride in buildings, gardens etc]

I think the cable run would have to be in trunking for most of the length along the living room and hallway, and going through the walls would be a problem.

It would certainly be too difficult for a DIY job – so budget probably a full day for our handyman, plus the cable and trunking and whatever we used to go through the walls; I think I’d be lucky to see change from €250, which is way beyond my budget.

Hence the thought of a standalone network.

But thanks again
Ken

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That length is not an issue, 100m (300ft) max.

You could run a length of network cable through the walls and then afterwards add the connectors - this way you would only need a very small hole to put through the walls.

Alternatively have you tried running network over your electric cables? Not as good as a network lead but can work well.

This type of thing:

TP-Link TL-WPA4220 Kit Powerline WiFi, AV600 Mbps su Powerline, 300 Mbps su WiFi 2.4 GHz, 2 Porte Ethernet, Plug and Play, WiFi Clone, HomePlug AV (Kit Contiene 1 Ricevitore e 1 Extender) Amazon.fr

(or a more modern Gigabit equivalent)

You would have one near the router and one in the study which you could connect to the GS-108

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Thanks, Mat
We tried Netgear powerline when we first moved in. The receiver in the study was connected to the Gigabit switch which in turn linked to the various devices. But a few months later it started to fall over - we think when some new equipt was added to the electrical supply – that was Netgear tech support’s verdict after lots of online and email discussions.

So I’m obviously reluctant to go down that route again

And cabling back to the Livebox is going to cost more than we can afford.

So can I return to my original idea – a wired network in the study, with the Macs’ individual wifi links for Ethernet. Am I right that I just need a common or garden router to do it?

Ken

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You may need to consider having fixed ip addresses to the items in the study and make sure your router cannot assign the same addresses.

Are you considering the macs connecting via WiFi for Internet and wired for printing? I have no idea if this would work - sorry.

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I’m not sure what the problem is. Buy this kit

to connect the Orange box to your study and then hook everything in the study together using a vanilla ethernet router.

Am I missing something?

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Mac network setup is a simple point and click “control panel” and I have used it in a previous existence to switch about 20 Macs between networks. {Obviously there’s the initial setup, but once configured, it’s stored]

This was when I ran the training room for a national newspaper group. Sunday to Thursday they were used on a closed local network for training journalists – variously used as dummy writing, editing and picture desk stations – preparing for a newly acquired title.

Late on Thursday evening we switched them all over to the live network used to produce another of the group’s Sunday titles.

It took about 2 minutes per machine – click to switch networks, wait a few seconds then click on a desktop shortcut to see that the correct server was visible and then on to the next.

In my current context, the only drawback appears to a brief “hiccup” if we want to print live web pages or emails but that’s hardly something we do every day.

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Thanks, John
We tried a Netgear powerline kit when we first moved in. By the time we had got all of our other electrical stuff around the apartment connected, it fell over. Slowed to a crawl and sometimes disappeared.

The tech support people told us that various kinds of appliances could interfere with the data networking, particularly in an building that’s nearly 50 years old and an apartment which has had several unspecified “electrical updates” over the years. The circuit breaker box was installed we understand about 8 years ago, but some of the wiring in the walls is almost certainly original.

Hence the decision to go for a separate wired network.

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As @Mat_Davies has advised, in your position, I would run an ethernet cable from your living room to the study. However rather than Cat6, I’d use Cat5e (cheaper, easier to bend, and thinner wires are less difficult to terminate). As others have advised, your Livebox acts as a DHCP server.

Turning to your study, I’d connect the network cable from the living room to your existing 8 port switch, and then connect the switch (by another cable) to an Access Point (NOT an extender).

I use the following access points TP-Link EAP245 AC1750 and TP-Link EAP225-Outdoor plus reconfigured 2 x BT Home Hub 5s.

The devices in your study could then connect via WiFi or ethernet (to/from the switch).

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I use these in a different location Ken. They are not great.

Develo are in a different league. Powerline data transmission is their core business not just another product in their range. I first used their gear around ten years ago and upgraded to their WiFi integrated offering during lockdown. We have units in the study, salon, upstairs and the garage (which gives us poolside coverage) and I’ve bought another one to stick miles away in the arbri voiture which I am confident will work.

Our wiring is a hotchpotch as well. There is the original, pretty packed, power board and
three smaller ones (plus a small one in the cave and another in the abri) that have been added as we put in patio, pool, gates, cave, etc. over the years. The Devolo app shows me the transmission speeds between nodes and while it does vary due to wiring anomalies it’s all very satisfactory. It also has the advantage of a single SSID for the whole house, so devices are handed off from node to node depending on signal strength.

We are also very speed dependent, our access to OneDrive and iCloud is through the study and that’s where our printer and iMac with an attached 20TB RAID (our life’s data :slightly_smiling_face:) is, which is used by my and my wife’s MacBooks no matter where we are. It all ties together perfectly.

Edit: I should add that when I renovated our old family home twenty years ago I imported a patch panel from the US for our garage and ran 2 Co-Ax 2 Cat 5e and 2 fibre and two telephone points to every room, and double that to the study and family room. So it was a pretty big panel. :roll_eyes:We never terminated or used the fibre but the cost of running it at the same time was negligible.

So, I do like a fast, reliable home network. :joy: and when we renovated our French home four years later I considered the same investment but I’m glad I didn’t bother now. The power line transmission is fine and getting better

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But speed of transfer has been suggested as an issue.

Are Cat5 & Cat6 patch leads signifantly different physically? - I normally struggle to tell the difference!

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Cat5e
The subsequent standard is Cat5e, and the “e” stands for “Enhanced.” The more modern Cat5e cable is produced to a higher standard, and is designed to reduce “crosstalk,” which is the phenomenon of unwanted transfer of signals in the wire that reduces throughput. Cat5e can have speeds of 1000 Mbps, and is used in many residential and commercial wired applications for Gigabit Ethernet. This is the slowest cable that anyone should use for a new Ethernet setup, and its primary advantage currently is its lower cost.
There is also a plan to increase the speeds of Cat5e to 5 Gbps over the existing cables, known as the IEEE P802.3bz standard, which also works on Cat6 cabling.

Cat6
The next standard up is Cat6, which are wound more tightly with a nylon spline and shielding to further reduce crosstalk and reduce interference. While the obvious advantage of Cat6 cabling is that the throughput bumps up to a ridiculous 10 Gbps, but the detail is that these speeds are limited to 55 meter / 164 feet distances, which is shorter than for Cat5 or Cat5e runs, and at longer distances goes back to 1 Gbps.
While the speeds are faster for Cat6 on shorter runs, the downside is that the wires are stiffer making them more difficult to bend, and the thicker wires are more difficult to terminate. Cat6 has also traditionally been more expensive, although the price difference compared to Cat5e has lessened over time.
While the Cat5e only adheres to the 1000Base-T/TX standard, Cat6 adheres to the much faster 10GBASE-T industry standard.

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I can’t see a home printer ever running out of steam with Cat 5 Mat. Can you?

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As a quick aside, I think ISP advertising hype has got to the general public. Most people have no idea of just how fast a Gbps is. Personally, I can’t watch ten movies concurrently :thinking:

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For printing no, but file transfers yes - I had a dramatic improvement when I went from 5 to 6 on our network but that was shifting many 2gb files.

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Those CPL boxes are also very susceptible to microsurges as we have found out to our cost more than once.

One suggestion I would make, as we have a similar problem in our home, is to buy a 4G router and take out a data only SIM contract. Set up the 4G router within, or near, your office space so that you can access it, and the printers from the same subnet. You could also use it for internet access when working in the office space and then use your Livebox when you move back to within reach. We also found that the speeds were better with 4G than with the Livebox, but our DSL is pretty crap.

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The thunderbolt on out new iMac makes the RAID seem almost internal.

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Dear all

Thanks for all the suggestions. Sadly they are all way too expensive.

We are semi-retired who do some freelance work. But to be honest we can’t spend €100–€200 on network tech which will probably work, but might not. We’ve already wasted more than that on the Nighthawk wifi repeater, which I will now be lucky to sell for €50 on ebay.

In an ideal world I would get my guy in to run a cable in conduit all the way from my desk to the Orange Livebox in the living room, but that’s not an option. Nor are the various powerline / CPL solutions. Which reminds me I must unearth the original Netgear CPL boxes and see if they will fetch a tenner or so on eBay!

Does the fact that folk are ignoring my idea of a standalone wired network mean that it will not work? One of my neighbours tells me that since wired-only routers are now largely discontinued, buy a branded wifi box with 4/5 ports and simply turn off the wifi. If it will work, please advise.

Many thanks

Ken