8. Closing Thoughts

The photo of my entire current setup (Figure 14) isn't that pretty to look at, but it gets the job done with room to spare in 2 ft. X 2 ft. of wall space. I ended up rearranging the coax panel boxes when I added the equipment shelf, which was no problem due to my releasable cable tie system (I just tucked the slack cable up between the floor joists).

Figure 14: The whole thing
(click image to enlarge)

This view also shows the two coaxes from my satellite dish coming in from the top left of the photo, crossing over, and connecting directly to the coax panel, which then patches it to the outlet box upstairs in the living room where a DirecTV Tivo is located. The other patch cable takes the RF output from the Tivo over to the TV in my wife's studio. I set her up with a

I also added an inexpensive floor-standing shelf next to the panel, which holds the APC UPS, usually an Infrant NAS, and an assortment of products waiting test or to be returned to their manufacturers. I decided against putting in a 19 inch rack because, as you can see, my equipment doesn't require one, they're a relatively expensive way to hold things and I had plenty of other ways to spend that money in a new home!

I'm pretty happy with how things turned out and think that paying to have the cabling run, but doing the termination yourself is a great way to put some "sweat equity" into a home networking installation without having to pay too much sweat!

But enough about me, how about you? If you'd like to share your story on how you approached the installation of a whole-house network, just drop me a line. A few pix and a short description of what went well, what didn't and lessons learned are all that I need to create a short article that others can benefit from. You know you want to, sooo...just do it now!