[clug] Re: Cabling your home and managing your boxen. (Paul Wayper, linux Digest, Vol 48, Issue 5)

[Miles Goodhew]

Paul Wayper wrote:
Hi Paul et. al.,

> I've rearranged my room again and so now my two always-on machines (firewall
...yadda, yadda...
> soundproof) space.  All in all I'm probably looking at sixteen connected
> devices, including phones.
> 
> So what do other people do with their home boxen?  Do you spend the money on

	At my old house, I got a hand-me-down Csironet 19" rack from the PCUG 
move to Weston. The downsides of this rack are manifest: It's only about 
19" deep, no power or shelves and seems to be made from depleted uranium 
coated in lead so it weighs a freaking tonne (ok, I think it's 1/16" 
steel panels on a 2x2x1/4" square steel-tube frame, but it's heav-eee!).

	Here's a Flickr set of photos of the rack in the old house:

http://flickr.com/photos/m0les/sets/72157594406637836/

	However, I'm getting ahead of myself. Originally I had my ADSL/Wifi 
router plus one 8-port switch stuffed into the top-shelf of the linen 
closet. I tried putting my Compaq Deskpro SFF pc up there also, but it 
made too much noise (These are really good little server boxes though - 
unfortunately it's behind the keyboard in a lot of the photos). I even 
tried putting my first NSLU2 file/web/DNS/DHCP-server up there also, but 
the disk even made too much of a racket for me. I self-cabled two 4-pair 
UTP cables to the 4 main rooms of the house. This was done about as well 
as you could expect from a programmer (i.e. badly). Later I ran two 
tie-lines to the garage and stuck everything in the rack. 
Power-interference problems, bad crimping, incompatible wall-jack 
selection and the desire to get access from both sides of the livingroom 
meant I had to do a few re-iterations in places to get it. This leads to 
my first deluge of sage advice:

	* Don't run unterminated cable and fiddle around crimpling plugs, 
punching-down wall-jacks or trying to get jacks to seat into 
switchplates made by a different manufacturer (and thus don't quite 
fit). Instead buy terminated cables of the right lengths (buy a bunch of 
various lengths in one go) plus some keystone wallplates and 
double-jacked inserts to suit. You then just have to clip the insert(s) 
into the back of the wallplate and then the in-wall cable plugs into the 
insert giving you a nice, stable port on the front.
	* Keep data cables away from power not only for the safety issue, but 
crosstalk too (A/c and washing machines can make life even more fun). If 
you're in attic space, see if you can anchor cables to the top-members 
of roof-trusses (certainly worthwhile trying to keep it out from 
underfoot nomatter where it is).
	* When running cabling in the roof, brick-veneer constructions usually 
only let you drop cable down external walls (between brick and gyprock). 
Internal walls have noggins between the studs that make dropping cable 
beyond half-way impossible.
	* If you've got underfloor access, you're probably better-off running 
cable here rather than in the ceiling. Cable-lengths are shorter and you 
don't have the noggin problem (just have to drill a hole through the 
bottom-plate).
	* If you need to attach to a punchdown termination of any kind, then 
still use the pre-terminated cable and snip-off the plug. You can use 
one of the cheapo punchdown tools (a lump of plastic with a metal 
"tooth" at one end, possibly a stripper-blade too), but I can't give-up 
on my "Krone-alike" tool I got on eBay - it seats the wire with the 
correct speed/power and also snips-off the excess at the same time.

> getting an actual rack with power rails and cabling patch panels?  How do you
> make sure that your hidden media server gets the power, air and data it needs?
>  Are there racking and equipment stores that will accept a private punter off
> the street?

	The cabling guys at the computer fairs sell a lot of good stuff very cheap:
	* wallplates
	* jacks
	* pre-terminated cables
	* 24-port, 19" patch-panels (cheap and have jolly colours! - not like 
the grey handmedown eyesore I've got)
	* cheapo punchdown tools
	* cheapo cable-testers (doesn't test split-pairs, but does all kinds of 
connectivity tests)

	Hardware stores like Bunnings and Magnet Mart have the 
wallplate-mounting brackets if you're going that way.
	Bennetts in Fyshwich will probably be happy to sell you all-kinds of 
bits-and-bobs and probably loan you a spool of cable if you really want 
to do it from the grass-roots up (The cable's got measurements printed 
on it, so you just pay for what you've used when you return the spool).

Hope that helps.

M0les.