Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Next I have two words about documentation—do some! It is best to label everything: cables, conduits, plugs,
sockets, everything. This is also true of your living room and TV installations because your VCR, PVR, DVD, and TV
will generally all sport identical black plugs! Use several bands of colored tape at each end to distinguish them, such
as red-red-green-blue. (Begin labeling using the color nearest the cable end.) You should document these color codes
as you go and reference them by taking photographs of the setup depicting the cables, connections, and wiring inside
each box. Although they do not make for very interesting viewing, they will become essential if you ever need to
change or repair anything.
Wired Network
Every room in the house should have at least two Cat5 cables running to it, directly from Node0. The living room
should have at least four, as should the master bedroom. If you're lucky enough to have a separate TV room, then so
should this. You should also have two Cat5 in the attic or loft if possible because this provides a very secure location
for your personal storage devices. If you have enough space between the wall joists and the patience, running two
Cat5 cables to every light switch is also a good piece of planning for the future. Determining the number of necessary
sockets is usually calculated by doubling the number you think you need. And then doubling it again! In short, you
can never have too many ports.
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Buy (or borrow) an IDC tool to bed down the Cat5 cables into their sockets. It will ease the process and, with so
many sockets to do, pay for itself in time.
Note
Having dual sockets isn't just for redundancy, as mentioned earlier, but for many other practicalities such as
debugging, since any unit plugged into Cat5 may (will?!) go wrong at some point in the future. The easiest way to solve this
is to sit down next to the device in question with a laptop to diagnose the problem. Having a second Cat5 socket makes this
easier, because you're not reliant on wireless, and it lets you double-check the network socket at the same time.
Cat5 should also be wired in abundance because it can usefully be applied to non-networking problems. That is, the
cable can be reused to provide power with a Power over Ethernet system, supply HDMI signals,
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or provide electricity
to low-powered wall units such as tablet machines. This is why I suggested Cat5 to the light switches earlier, because you
can replace the old switches with high-tech touch panels with significantly more configuration possibilities. There is also
the possibility of upgrading your X10 modules to C-Bus, if that's the route you want to take, using Cat5 cables.
In addition to power, Cat5 sockets can be fitted with cheap adapters to make them compatible with ISDN or
standard landline telephones, should you want to extend your standard phones in this way.
If you can see the potential for a lot of Cat5 reappropriation, then it is worthwhile to upgrade from two ports to four
ports in each room. In this way, you can keep two of them as traditional network sockets, which can always be extended
further by adding a network switch to one of them, and give the other two alternate uses such as phones or power.
The location for the Cat5 sockets will often be governed by the wall into which you're placing them. This is usually
near the corners, which is good aesthetically speaking if you're using external wall trunking. It's also practical since you'll
want to place them close to the power sockets in each room so that devices using both sockets can run shorter (and
therefore, tidier) cables. These devices typically include media head units, printers, laptops, and touchscreens.
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Keep a reasonable distance between the network cable and power cable to minimize electrical noise. This is
naturally true of any type of data cable.
Note
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