Buy a house wired with CAT-5, how to utilize?

Question

I'm buying a house wired with CAT-5 to each room. I'd like to have a distributed home theater/home network. What's the best approach to utilize this wiring.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Does the wiring end up in one centralized location?  If so then you would install all of the equipment at that location.  The Cat5e would be used to distribute the signals to all of the rooms using video to cat5 conveters.

http://www.svideo.com/videobalun1.html

http://www.lashen.com/vendors/intelix/vi...

Answer 2

Cat 5 is Telephone wire! If you can find a network device that uses it > get it now.

Most home networks utilize Cat 6 for home computing networks.

Cat 6 is an ETHERNET LAN, and most Home Theatre Networking products, including the next generation PlayStation Gaming System utilize this transfer protocol.

If you will be using more than one computer in the area

a Cat 6 or 802.11(a,b,g,or n) network will be necessary to route the traffic, so a wired/wireless modem/router is the best way to go, and the wireless network will not require wiring your house or be left behind when you move.

Answer 3

You are going to need a router with enough ports to accommodate the wires leading to your one central location.  It would be wise to have an IT professional over to check out what is there and what to do with it.  Do you know which level of CAT5 it is?  Cat5e would be preferred.

Answer 4

When I remodeled my house, I ran cable (coax), phone, and cat-5 cable to at least two jacks in every room in the house. The cable and phone are obvious. But, the cat-5 was for running a wired computer network through the house.

We took the cable input to the house and ran it to a common point (network panel). There, we split the cable and fed one leg to the cable modem for the computer. We then ran that to an Ethernet router, which feeds all of the cat-5 jacks throughout the house.

What that allows us to do is to plug a computer into any cat-5 jack in the house and it is already connected through the router to the computer modem. This eliminates the need for a wireless modem, which can be intercepted as a useable port by some hacker outside the house. It basically forms a hardwire computer network that can't be accessed from outside the network.