Networking / Beginners

Concentrators are innately powerless

Ethernet concentrators require electrical power, so they must be located near an electrical outlet. Unless you want to do some fancy electrical work (or you don't mind the cable(s) keeping you from closing the closet door all the way), a closet - which otherwise would be a great location to hide a concentrator - won't work because there is usually no electrical outlet nearby.

Warning Keep your concentrator plugged into a surge protector. Plug the surge protector into a wall outlet and then plug the concentrator into the surge protector. Surges travel rapidly through cable, and when they do, they zap everything in the cable's path. A good surge can take out every NIC on the network. A really strong surge can push the damage past the NIC and fry the computer's motherboard. (Remember, every NIC is connected to the cable, and every NIC is also connected to its motherboard.)

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In this tutorial:

  1. Installing Ethernet Cable
  2. Ready, Set, Run
  3. Ethernet cable has many aliases
  4. Concerning the concentrator
  5. Deciding Where to Put the Concentrator
  6. Concentrators are environmentally fussy
  7. Concentrators are innately powerless
  8. Distance Depends on What You Choose to Measure
  9. Handling Cable Correctly
  10. Connecting two patch cables
  11. Making your own patch cables
  12. The Chase Is On: Running the Cable
  13. Cabling within a room
  14. Cabling between adjacent rooms
  15. Cabling between nonadjacent rooms on the same floor
  16. Keeping your drill holes in the closet
  17. Cable that's all walled up
  18. Cabling between Floors
  19. Adding cable faceplates
  20. Using floor cable covers
  21. Curing Your Network's Growing Pains
  22. Don't add another router
  23. Getting into the Zone