A little may depend on your future plans for the house, too. A low-voltage
wiring system can add value since future residents may want computers, but
not have wireless. It's a selling point. And watch out for those rebates!
They get you to buy, but they don't like to pay. On the other hand, if you
go to a good book store and look around, you can find books giving a
complete description of how to install a wireless system. Definitely worth
considering, but I wouldn't be quite so extreme in my opinion. You may even
consider a hybrid system.

beekay

"William Morris" wrote in
message ...
On no, Jay, don't do it. What you spend in cable, outlet boxes, RJ45
connectors male and female will be far more expensive than a wireless
router, appropriate nics, with a signal booster or two. Best Buy's got a
great deal on Netgear wireless - rebates on everything. Did it over the
weekend, and I'll never look back.

Wireless, or not at all.

"Jay Chan" wrote in message
om...
Sorry for the long post.

I am planning to network my old house with wire. I would like to learn
some tips in running wire through existing walls and floors.

My house has two floors and one basement. And I want to have network
connection in all two floors and the basement. Seem like one way to do
this is to run a wire through the exterior wall in the second floor,
and run it straight down through the exterior wall in the first floor,
and into the basement. By running wire inside the basement
suspended-ceiling, I can easily run the wire to many areas in the
basement and back up to the first floor. The problem is: How do I run
the wire from the second floor to the basement?

What I am planning to do:
- Find a spot on the 2nd floor wall that is away from power outlet by
at least 16 inches.
- Remove the baseboard heating unit from one side of the wall in the
second floor.
- Open a small hole on the wall behind the baseboard unit.
- Open a small hole near the bottom of the wall in the first floor
where no one will see the hole, and where there is no baseboard.
- Examine the small hole in the first floor to make sure there is no
cable/pipe hidden behind the wall.
- Go back to the second floor, and use a right angle drill to drill a
hole through the base frame to reach the first floor.
- Use a fishing wire to fish the network cable through the small hole
in the second floor to the small hole in the first floor.
- Fish the wire from the first floor to the basement should be
relatively easy.
- Use the baseboard heating unit to cover the small hole in the
second floor. Use a baseboard trim to cover the small hole in the
first floor.

My questions a

- How difficult it is to remove the baseboard heating unit and put it
back? I can do basic plumbing stuff (such as cutting pipes and solder
them back; but I have never touch anything related to heating). Do I
need to drain the water inside the pipe and refill it afterward? Is
there any documentation or book about this? If this requires a
plumber, I would have to leave the baseboard unit alone and open the
wall above it instead.

- How realistic is this to fish a wire from the first floor to the
second floor with only one hole in each floor without opening another
hole near the ceiling of the first floor? If this requires opening
another hole near the ceiling, I would have to cancel this project
because I am not planning to re-do the wall paper in the first floor,
nor to put crown molding in the first floor (where there is none) to
cover the hole.

- Any other alternative that I might have overlooked?

I could have run the wire through the exterior wall to outside the
house and drop the wire down to near the house foundation and back
inside the basement. But this would be ugly and squirrels would bite
the wire (my old cable TV wire was damaged this way). Therefore, I
prefer to run it through indoor instead of outdoor.

I could have used wireless network. But wireless network is probably
marginal for streaming video through two floors (especially if the
video is HDTV when it becomes common). I prefer something that can
give me a higher margin of success.

Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

Jay Chan