Operation Home Run

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Had the day off yesteday, and the girlfriend was sick, so I had plenty of time to work on the project. I had to cut a hole in the closet wall to route the wires, so I have to figure out how to fix the wall now. I WAS just going to cut the wall, drill through the stud, the patch the wall, but I would have had to drill through almost 2 feet of wood (will post pic). So for now, the cables snake out of the wall around the wood. It's in a closet, so no big deal. I have pulled 2 of the runs so far, and have 4 to go. Office and spare bedroom are done. Basement (only needs a 10 foot run, so that's the easiest one) and master bedroom are next, THEN the living room (empty room anyways) and the garage (maybe). Next on the list is getting a vice for my workbench. That will help to cut down the 7 foot tall 19" rack I have to only 40". Also gotta get a nice QUALITY power strip for the rack on my lunch break today and look at batery backup units. Once the rack is up, I can start terminating the cables on the patch panel. Deadline for setup is Monday the 29th, that's when my IPTV gets installed, and I want plug and play installation. Will post pics when I get time.... (at work posting from my iPhone).

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Well, got the rack pretty much together. Just need the home gateway from the ISP (need theirs cause it splits video/voice/data), and my NAS to be down there... It isn't down there cause I haven't terminated the cables at the rack yet. I do have the next 2 days off to work on it though, and then install of AT&T U-Verse internet/voice/TV on Monday the 29th. So thats my target date.

Here is a sneak peak at the rack...

 

[Kharn]

DIY rack an ONE **** OF A ROUTER / SWITCH!

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

that is a D-Link 24 port gigabit switch, and 2 Cisco 2500 routers that will be used as a shelf.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

looking good so far! I'm assuming you drew up a rough cable-placement plan, any chance of that getting posted?
Oh, it might have been worth your while to get a friend in the network business before starting this.
One of the lecturers in my college has quite a few 'contacts', meaning he gets his stuff super cheap, he also doesn't mind including any requests the students have with his orders. So we get 30-40% discounts on everything we want. pwnage.

 

[Kharn]

Etherial can you post some more pics of the ghetto rack you have going? I rely like that an I think i can use it at work for a replacement.

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Saxon, I will try to get some more pics up when I can.

RACK IS 100% COMPLETED!!!
Operation Home Run is about 90% complete... only 2 cable runs left to do, 1 to main room / dining room, and another to the garage. Neither of these are a priority, as there is nothing in the main room cept my roomie's dog crate, and cat stuff. Garage isn't a priority cause.... it's the garage.

AT&T U-Verse tech came today to install my VOIP, internet, and TV bundle. He seemed pretty impressed with my setup, and the fact that everything was just plug and play. Only thing he had to do for me wiring wise was run 1 coax and 1 cat 5e cable outside the house for me. He even sealed up the holes he drilled really good.

SADLY, while my service is 100% ready to go at the house, I am the FIRST person in the area with the service, and they had an outage they weren't aware of, because there is NO ONE ELSE to report trouble, lol. Aside from that, in the next day or two I should be rockin and rollin with my 400 channel TV, whole house DVR (1 DVR, watch & record shows from that DVR through any regular box in any room), VOIP, and 10 down / 1 up internet, nearly twice as fast as the 6 Meg I've had the past few months.

Sadly, I can't post pics here from my iPhone, can't get to photobucket from the work computer, and well, internet isn't up yet at home. But pics will come soon!!

 

[KSoD]

Congrats E_D. Sounds like a great setup and job well done!

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Here is the only pic I have right now.... internet at the house isn't up yet, posting from computer at part time job, on lunch.... no firewall...

Sorry for the bad lighting, there is no light in there, so I took this from my iPhone while holding a flashlight....

At some point, I will have a BUNCH MORE pics up, not yet though...

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Sorry Saxon, almost forgot..... Here is a link to a rack that is VERY similar to the one I have. That pic is EXACTLY what it looked like before I took a hacksaw to it and cut it down to 40". Just a standard 19" wide, 2 post telco rack.

Relay Rack: Aluminum Relay Rack from Rackmount Solutions