Pablo Averbuj

Wiring Hell

I’ve had a bit of problem for the last year. I like keeping the servers in the basement of the house because it is cooler and I can’t hear their constant roar; I also like having my office upstairs because I don’t have to traverse 2 staircases to get to my desk and I like the view of the trees from the office. There was never decent connectivity between the two for various reasons; I’m convinced that my life is better if I secure my WiFi from phantom wardrivers, there was no existing wiring to the office or guest bedroom (not even telephone), and the solution I had chosen — over powerlines — wholly sucked. This caused me great consternation as the PowerLine stuff could only sustain approximately 2mbps.

Fortunately all this went away this past weekend. My brother and my father came for a visit and while he was here I roped my brother into helping me run cat5e from the basement to the office. Leigha had concerns about us making great big wholes in the wall and leaving them as an eyesore — we did make large holes, but Roger took care of patching them. Overall the project was a success although not without its hurdles, and in general I’d call it a pain in the ass. Next step is to upgrade to gigabit ethernet.