setting up a home network using built in cat5

[egl2004]

I'm helping friend of mine is to set up a home network. He has cat5 cabling running along side the phone line in his house and he is working on installing ethernet wall jacks. What do we need to do in order to set up a peer-to-peer network over this line? Right now he only has two computers he wishes to connect, but in the future, he wants others to be able to bring in laptops and connect to it. He does not want to connect his network to the internet. What kind of equipment does he need to buy and how should we go about setting it up? Any suggestions or information would be very helpful.

[DragonNOA1]

Do you know if the house has a built in switch or hub anywhere? Like in the basement? Or do you know how everything is connected? Seems weird if they just had wires in the wall because you wouldn't know where they all went and what they connected to.

[Confused]

I presume they all home to one location such as the basement. If so a hub is all you need for the PC's to communicate with each other. Just plug all the cables into the hub and then PC's in each room can communicate with others connected.

If there is any chance that he will want to connect to internet in future he can add a router then.

If they don't home to a central location then he has problems trying to do what he wants.
Chas

[bailey]

do not use a hub, use a switch instead, hubs are old fashion and switches has replaced them and are much better performance

[egl2004]

As he was working on it, I never saw a group of wires meeting anywhere. At each of the wall plates, there are two cat5 cables. The phone line uses a twisted pair from one, leaving the other three open. He attached the ethernet jack using the two free pairs from the cable without the phone. I don't know exactly where all the wires meet, but the extra cable seemed to run alongside the phone line. He mentioned there being loose ends in the main phone box where the line comes into the house. They might meet there. He told me that when the house was being built that he reqested the run cat5 cables so that he could set up a network later on. I'll have to find out where they meet and how exactly they are run.

[edfair]

if all that will be connected is the 2 machines you can do it by putting a crossover patch cord in one place in the path.

Cat5 is 4 pair cable. You would want to punch down all 8 wires in the jack for the ethernet connection.

Sounds like there is some cabling standard other than ethernet being attemped and it is probably going to be a problem.