Advanced Ethernetting

I wrote a while ago about upgrading my internet speeds at home. When I did that, I swapped out my Eero, as well, all of it in hopes that I’d be able to get a steady, consistent speed up in my movie room. (The internet comes into the house in the office, where I have my main computer. The movie room is on the complete other side of the house, and it’s where almost all of the streaming is done, plus video game consoles. Having bad internet there is . . . much less than good.)

Unfortunately, my 1843 house’s walls proved too much even for more powerful Eeros, and I just haven’t been able to get speeds up in the movie room to a consistently good level. (I’m paying for 1gbps, which I get in the office. In the movie room, I’ve been lucky to crack 100mbps.) This meant I needed to go to more drastic measures.

What sort of measures, you ask?

Well, drilling through the floor and running an ethernet cable through my basement and crawlspace, then drilling through a wall and running the cable through the garage, and then drilling through another floor and running it to the movie room. All of which I did yesterday. And because I didn’t want to have to drill enormous holes, I bought ethernet cable that didn’t have the connectors attached, which meant I needed to learn how to do that.

Yesterday didn’t run as smoothly as I’d hoped. Lessons learned?

• When running wires, you need to feed the wire through the various obstacles as you go. Trying to attach it to things after the fact is . . . less than helpful.
• Putting on ethernet connectors really isn’t rocket science, but it does help to be able to tell the difference between the color blue and the color green. I thought I was good at that. My ethernet wiring skills beg to differ.
• When feeding out ethernet cord from a big spool, start with the end that’s in the middle of the spool, not the end that’s on the outside of it. Or else hook the spool up to something that will let it spin. Unless, of course, you like untangling wire.
• Untangling wire that’s 250 feet long is less fun than you’d think it would be.

The good news is that when I checked speeds, I’m already up to 550mbps in the movie room. I’m not sure why it’s not higher, and there are some things I could troubleshoot, but for now, that’s plenty fast, and I’m happy to have it finally done.

The better news is that I hopefully don’t have to go back down to my basement anytime soon.

The best news is that I’m done being in the crawlspace. Me no likely crawlspaces.

Am I planning on going into business networking stuff together? Definitely not. But it’s nice to remember that there are multiple DIY skill sets out there. I may not be particularly strong in the “construction” or “mechanic” areas, but if you’re looking for “computer” or “A/V set up,” I can hold my own.