You are in for a rude surprise when you try to match the white unless
you have some of the original paint. You will have to repaint the
entire wall to get it to match, but not the whole room.

Thanks for the warning. But I have expected this kind of thing to
happen. Luckily the entire wall in that area is quite small. Worst
comes to worst, I can repaint the wall without much of a trouble.

You can buy bulk cable at Home Depot and add your own connectors.

I plan to use cat-6 cable. Home Depot doesn't have cat-6 (and I am not
sure if they have cat-5e either). I think I will mail order instead.

When you buy a hub or router look for one that has both ethernet and
wireless, even if you don't use the wireless part yet. (Disable it to
keep neighbor kids off of you network.) I've seen wireless routers with
a built-in 4-port ethernet switch for about the same price as just an
ethernet router.

Good point. I will look closely to find a combo
routers/switches-with-wireless to see if I can find one that is
reasonably priced. Then I will have one less device to get losed in
the tangle of wires. But I have a feeling that the wireless component
in a combo device is probably one generation behind (802.11b) and
doesn't support the latest high speed wireless protocol
(802.11a/802.11g combo or something like that).

Jay Chan