[ILUG] Simple question about home wired Ethernet

[Anthony Staines]

Hi,
We're having bits of our house remodeled as I speak, and it occurred to 
me that it would be a good idea to put in some Ethernet cable while this 
is happening. I have several PC's variously linked by long cat-5 cables 
and wireless links from a combined adsl modem/router/wireless hub from 
Netgear. This works well, but it is rather tatty, as my beloved has 
occasionally pointed out to me.

What I want is to put the hub in one room (the office), connect it to 
wall sockets, link these sockets (by CAT-5 cable) to sockets in the 
attic and kitchen. Unfortunately I have no (real) idea what I'm doing. I 
dimly remember things called patch panels which did exactly what I want. 
You plugged your hub into the panel by a short cable, and a long cable 
ran from the panel to a wall socket far away, into which you duly 
plugged your PC. Patch panels now seem to come for 19" racks only, and I 
definitely don't want one of these.

So, what should I do? The simplest solution, if it worked, would be to 
put one double RJ-45 socket in the wall in the office, put the two 
cables into this, presumably using an RJ-45 crimp tool, and run each 
cable up to a single RJ-45 socket in the wall in the attic and kitchen. 
Would this work? Any advice on suppliers of good quality sockets? 
Obviously this solution doesn't scale well, to say the least, but I can 
live with that.

All help gratefully received,
Anthony Staines

-- 
Dr. Anthony Staines, Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology.
Dept. of Public Health Medicine, UCD, Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Tel:- +353 1 716 7345. Fax:- +353 1 76 7407 Mobile:- +353 86 606 9713
Web:- http://phm.ucd.ie