Getting wired

The cable guy is coming on Thursday afternoon/evening to hook us up with Digital Cable and RoadRunner service. I'm not going to have him do anything overly complex at this point - just get the service online and get my computer(s) hooked up. Because this is our own house, and we have some room to spread out, I can take some time and get a nice setup going, instead of tacking wires to walls and ceilings like I've done in apartments.

My original plan was to make the pantry/laundry room my "server closet" as well. Place the Linux box in there along with the cablemodem and wireless router. However, I'm not sure that we have enough power outlets to run everything the room, and I don't want power strips everywhere. Continuing with that plan, though, I was going to go wireless for my desktop in the back bedroom, and then when spring comes run some Cat5 in conduit out the dryer vent hole (being cut by the plumber next week when he does the rst of the requisite work to move the washer/dryer to the pantry), underground over to the bedroom.

There's good power, and coax, on the kitchen side of the shared wall (above and left of the fridge is a piece of coax where she had her TV), I may be able to pull those through to the other side after punching a hole in the pantry. I don't know that we're going to make use of the power & cable in that kitchen location anyway. If I get desperate, I can always put a splitter inside the wall, with short lengths to either side.

My other idea was to put the equipment in the upstairs front bedroom. It already is wired for cable, and the bathroom extends into the bedroom, creating a shelf (think building-inside-a-building) where I could tuck the computer, router and cablemodem up and out of the way. Plenty of power in that room. But then it's a chore to go do any maintenance right at the physical equipment. And I'll have really long Cat5 runs if I decide to do wired networking anywhere.

On one of my many trips into the basement, I noticed that there's a lot of coax down there, and several splitters in various locations. I may spend a weekend this summer ripping all that out and cleaning up the wiring. Then I can put in one large splitter to handle everything, and when I pull the coax to each room I can pull Cat5 along with it to establish a wired network in the house. Most of the rooms I want to do these runs for already have coax, so I can use the existing cable as a fish line. Just have to work out where the equipment would actually reside.