Wiring Cabinet

[LarryG]

Knotley you mentioned not crossing 120 volt wires unless at a 90 degrees otherwise 1 foot apart. Why? The reason I ask is that I had an electrician hook up 3 difference 20 amp circuits recently but I myself layed the wire out and I did cross a couple of them. Is this a safety hazard?

Mac, he's not talking about the 120V lines crossing each other. He's talking about the 120V lines crossing low-voltage wiring used for stuff like audio, video, computer network, etc.

[scorrpio]

You generally want to keep **analog** wiring away from electric lines. Those include speaker wires, analog audio/video interconnects, TV antenna, stuff like that. Digital signals generally have too high a difference between a '0' and a '1' signal level to be influenced. Still, it is common sense to keep them separate.
Don't look at me, R2D2. I am an interpreter, not a technitian - how am I supposed to know the difference between a power outlet and a computer terminal?
Wireless networks are fine for most applications, in particular when each PC uses its own storage for everything, but if you want to move to a central server system, it becomes limiting in a hurry. Suppose you have a massive server with several terabytes of storage in RAID 1+0 sitting in basement and housing your movies, music, photo, home video, recorded TV programming, and a lot of other things. All that storage needs lots of cooling, which is accomplished via many noisy fans - but being in the basement, you don't hear it. Now, if you want to stream all that media to any PC in the house, you need a Gigabit network. Try streaming a DVD-quality movie to a TV in living room while one of your children is watching a TV recording in Hi-Def, and your significant other is listening to music in the kitchen, and you'll have wireless crawling and dying.
It is a good idea to set up a wireless access point on your network so portable devices can be portable - but going fully wireless is still too limiting.

[rbfunk]

Wiring Cabinet

Great information!
I just want to add a couple of thingsthat I have learned the hard way.
Keep all phone and cat5 as far from floursecent lights as practical

Keep as far as possible from any wire attached to a dimmer,

I wish I could rewire my house with cat5, phone,etc

Bob

[scorrpio]

As an aside: get 500MHz rated CAT6, not CAT5. You can get it for like $73 per 1000' spool at Newegg. When you upgrade to Gigabit, last thing you wanna do is rewire your network...

[knotley]

Yes, as a few had said, if you must cross 120 volt lines with low voltage lines, cross them at 90 degrees. I think the swhowto.com website talks a bit about that.

[linear]

For the video side, get hold of a channelvision catalog and read the stuff in the back about video distribution--it's really informative.

http://www.channelvision.com/pdf/cat...alog-hirez.pdf [23MB PDF]

It will keep you from getting the heebie jeebies about the dBs.

[JimD]

I googled parts express to get the website. It is www.partsexpress.com. They sell a lot of speaker parts but also have batteries, wire, connectors, etc.. I think their prices are pretty good but I did not look extensively. I bought 500 foot of 16 gauge speaker wire I put into the walls of my house while it was under construction and parts for at least 9 speakers I have built for me or my son. We've also bought camcorder and phone batteries from this place.

I really like wireless because I like laptops much better than desktops. My wireless network has limitations but then so does my computer. I am sitting in my recliner watching the olympics as I type this with my computer on my lap. With a long enough wire, I might be able to do this with a hard connection to my DSL modem on the second floor of my house but the wireless works better for me.

On the subject of speed, we have both a wired and wireless network in the office. Sometimes I boot up on the wireless card so I can more easily take my laptop to meetings. For most of what I do, including moving files around on the netwook, I do not notice a difference in speed between the "g" wireless (54 Mbps like I use at home) and the wired network (100 Mbps). Sometimes the wireless seems a bit slower. Most of the time I spend waiting has nothing to do with the connection speed, I am waiting on the server to do what I told it. One of my co-workers who is more computer literate than I am thinks working only on a wireless network is silly. He also regularly upgrades his desk-top to add the latest mother board to gain speed. If you want the absolute highest performance, I agree a wired network is better. For my more casual use, I think the wireless is perfectly adequate. I think there are a lot more people with modest requirements like mine than there are that can really tell the difference between "g" or better wireless and a wired network. Having the wire in the walls gives you the flexibility to go either way, however.

Jim

[lssm37]

No electrical code

The type of wiring you are speaking of is all low voltage stuff and wouldn't be covered by any electrical code that I know of.

[sd]

Low voltage wiring is covered by the National Electrical Code, which is the basis for most local electrical codes in the U.S. Chapter 8 of the 2005 NEC covers communications wiring. You can read the NEC online for free somewhere on the NFPA.org web site. There is a free Low Voltage Book available for download from Mike Holt's web site.

You may also want lo look into the TIA/EIA standards.

[LinuxRandal]

I wired up both my Lawyers business, and my brothers new house (cat 5e pre cat6 spec, multiple rg6, left a couple areas accessible for Fiber optic, phone).

I have a local, salvaged freight place, that I bought most of my stuff from. A borg, levitron media cabinet, $20, cat 5e wire, regular and plenum, for also around $20 ($15-$25, multiple spools) cat 6, misc jacks and punchdown tools. As for codes, check with your local inspectors office. My brothers house, the inspectors, hasn't got a clue how to tell if the wiring was plenum or not (or even if it was needed). We wired it to the national spec, at the time (changes occassionally), and went above and beyond what the builders would do (they appraised my job at $5000 if they did that much). I made some suggestions, and my brother said no, 6 months later, he regretted that. He has since gotten wireless, and it helps with the missing needs. But with online gaming, serving the home stereo, and a couple other things, the wired holds up better (lack of lag).
Another reason I prefer wired, security (ever seen a demonstration where someone used ethereal, to break the wireless encryption, in under three minutes?). That is a typical, FBI demo, and they are behind the hackers. How would you feel about your lawyers or Doctors info on you being accessed? IMHO, wireless is for websurfing ONLY, not even to check your email.