Running Cable/Internet to Guest House

[nilum]

I recently moved back home from school and unfortunately my parents aren't too thrilled with me taking over the guest room and my old room. My mom wants me to move into our guest house which is about 30 feet away from the main house. The problem is that the guest house has no cable or internet for that matter.

I do a lot of gaming so wireless is out of the question (currently our modem and router are in my room). I am trying to talk my dad into letting me dig a trench to the adjacent house and running the cable that way. Our cable unfortunately enters the house on the opposite side which means running it quite a distance from the pole and having to make an exit on the side to the adjacent house.

He is pretty much against it and wants to instead just pay for cable to be run to that house from the pole and pay for it as a separate cable bill. Definitely a lot less hassle, but for our package we pay nearly $200 a month because it includes phone as well. Obviously I wouldn't need something that expensive, but it would be nice to have the premium channels and such that we have at home as well as the internet package they have.

What I am wondering is if it would be cost effective. I think if I can convince my dad that it would be a good investment he might consider it.

I know I am probably going to need an amplifier. I am just not sure what kind. I am also not sure how many dBm(?) I am getting where it comes into the house. I imagine there is some sort of meter to measure this?

Also what do you guys think the best set up for this would be?

I was thinking mounting their cable modem and router in their basement inside an enclosure on the side adjacent to the guest house. Drill an exit there and connect it via some fiberglass tubing through a trench to the guest house. I would then run the Ethernet and Cable through there to an amplifier/switch in my house.

I guess the real question is would it be cost effective.

What kind of equipment do you guys suggest?

Also the guest house is 2 floors. Small kitchen and living area on the first and Bedroom on the top. Doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to drop an ethernet cable from the top floor to the bottom where the switch is.

[nilum]

Okay this is the setup I am thinking about.

Can you guys recommend any cable amplifiers or routers/switches? I was thinking Gigabit networking.

Also I didn't think I would need to boost the Ethernet because of the switch/AP in my diagram. Am I right in thinking that?

[nilum]

Nevermind can't do this setup forgot about the phone lines.

[mojo]

That setup should be just about fine. You are right that you don't need an amplifier for the network because the signal is repeated every time it goes through a switch. You also probably won't need to worry about the distance for the coax cable; it's really not that far. You would not want to boost the coax signal at that point anyways, but rather just boost it once if needed before it goes out to the guest house. Also, cable modems don't like being behind amps. So for the coax, it will come into the house and go into a 2 way splitter. One side of the splitter will go into the modem and the other side will go into everything else, including your drop for the guest house. You may or may not need an amp; you'll just have to see how it works. If you do end up needing an amp just use 1 and put it right after the first 2-way splitter.

Phone lines are really nothing to be frightened of. If you're already running cables in some sort of pipe just add phone in there too. The physical cabling can be the same type of cable you use for the network, you just have to connect it to the main phone wiring and terminate it into a phone wall-plate in the guest house instead of the switch/ap. And actually, there may already be phone lines in the guest house; you might want to check on that.