ED HAYES

Problem

I recently rearranged furniture in my condo.  Doing so required me to use the wireless 802.11 G network on my iMac.  I was not too thrilled with the solution; media transfers to my Tivo were extremely slow, and the connection was not as reliable as the hardwired one I had become accustomed to.

I remembered that my condo had many phone jacks throughout, so I thought I would research how my builder wired my unit, and maybe change the phone jacks to Ethernet jacks. Worse case scenario, I could at least get one 100 Mb connection from my iMac on one wall, to my Tivo under the TV on the other wall.

Solution

Turns out, the builder did a remarkably robust job with the wiring!  He used Cat5 cabling and all connections went to the closet! What a blessing!

I replaced all the wall plates with new versions and terminate the cat5 cables with Ethernet keystones.  I then created a small little networking area in my laundry closet.  Luckily, the builder also wired the cable lines to the same location he put the phone wiring. I was able to tap into the cable line right where I terminated the Ethernet in the closet.

After some cable crimping and wall mounting I was set!  My cable modem and router were hidden in my laundry closet, with hard wired Gigabit capable Ethernet jacks throughout my condo.  Pretty slick! And all under $15.

Next Step: Gigabit 802.11 N router!