A wired Ethernet house the easy way?

January 19th, 2008

I want a super fast connection between my desktop computer in my room and my Xbox 360 in the basement. Having such a connection would mean that I could listen to music, view my photo library, watch recorded TV and podcasts, and even pause, fast-forward, and rewind live TV from my Xbox thought it’s Extender for Media Center functionality–all without hiccups in performance.

One option is D-Links amazing but equally expensive new router, plus a media bridge for the Xbox, plus an adapter for my desktop. The bottom line? More than $500. Ouch. I need something a little less expensive.

The best choice for performance has been and always will be a wired connection. The problem is that I can’t just run wires along the base of the walls on the floors. As I was thinking about how to easily get ethernet cables into the wall, I had an idea:

There are outlets like this all over the house. This one goes from my room, up to the attic. There’s another one that goes from my attic down to the family room, where the router is, and there’s another one that goes from there to the basement! For a quick and messy solution, all I would have to do is drop a cable down from the upper receptacles and catch it through the lower ones below. When I want to do a more polished job I can just cut a somewhat square-ish hole in the wall, like the cable guy did, and drill an Ethernet faceplate directly into the drywall.

I’m going to have to try that.

Tutorials
Dlink, Ethernet, Home Networking, Media Center
19 January 2008 comments [3] TrackBack-URI

3 comments

DIY Wired Network — My Piece of the Inter(.)net posted on January 26, 2008:

[...] the TV room in the basement, so I figured it would be pretty easy to rig something up. First I thought I could just follow the TV cables around, because I when I unscrewed a receptacle in my room, it looked like empty space in the [...]
Chadwick Michie posted on August 28, 2010:

Did it work?
David McGrath posted on September 22, 2010:

ha, no. ): I did have success routing an Ethernet cable under a baseboard and through the floor, though. That brought the cable down to the basement, which has a false ceiling.