Network switch in garage

[Andrendaz]

Hello all,
I hope this isn't going to be too wordy, but I want to provide as much info as I can. Please let me know if anyone wants more details about anything or pictures, whatever I can provide.
I bought a brand new home about a year ago. I moved in knowing that every room in the house had an Ethernet cable pulled to it and I was very excited about this as I've never had a fully wired house before. I quickly lost my excitement when the tech from Frontier came to install FIOS at my house.
He pointed out to me that every cable had been run to the outside of my house, the exterior of one of my garage walls. I was thinking, no problem he can make them all live when he installs the Frontier Box on the outside of my house to terminate the FIOS line. I was wrong again.
He could only make one of the Ethernet ports inside my house live. I wasn't happy but what choice did I have. I chose the one in my office and have run a wireless router ever since. Now I want a change.
I am looking for any suggestion of how I can get all the other ports in my house live so that I can stream from my media server without having to deal with the lag of my wireless network.
I know that I can pull the Ethernet cables back through the wall so that they are on the inside of my garage rather than the outside. What network rack enclosure suggestions do people have for me? Any help would be very appreciated.

Thank you in advance,

 

[Hayato213]

Sound like wall patching wasn't done correctly.

 

[Wayden]

Depends how much money you want to spend. The cheapest option is to just put RJ45 ends on the and mount a switch directly to the wall and plug all the cables in.
Otherwise you get a small patch panel with enough ports to punch down all the cables and then run a patch cable from ports in the front to the switch. Some people mount the patch panel directly into the wall but you can buy a small wall mount rack to put both this patch panel and the switch in.
Most the ones I have helped with all opt for the cheap route of screwing the switch flat to the wall and plugging in all the cables.
https://toptenreviewsite.com/top-10-network-switch-manufacturers-of-2023/

 

[FAST6191]

Was it originally done as a CCTV setup or possibly proper zone level alarm/fire*? If so be careful as some such setups will not be nice cat 6 cable that can do gigabits or better as much as far older approaches that are probably slower (don't know what lag as in latency you are getting from wireless but that might be a different discussion). On the other hand if they gave you UV, cold and fire rated and possibly rodent resistant cable then nice.

I do also have to say wireless signal boosters are not necessarily a scam any more -- time was they were not worth the cardboard they came in but some of them the last few years actually do something of merit, and it might also be possible to use the wires to stick another wireless access point the other side of the house which was always my preference (not to mention many consumer things these days seem to lack ethernet ports in favour of wireless).

*I don't know what the American term is offhand but something like multiple flats or house of multiple occupancy might mandate full on fire system and thus this sort of thing in a garage (which could have a locked cupboard/landlord closet).

Rack enclosure will depend what you want to do -- patch panel and say a 24 port dumb switch (maybe 12 depending upon what you have -- 3 bed house + office + kitchen + living room + dining room with single rather than dual port means 12 is doable enough) barely even warrants a cabinet/more than whatever is sold in basic office supply or indeed found in a bin from a bankrupt company.
The nature of your garage might also change something -- if it is a cold state where such things are sealed and warm garage compared to cold garage and barely sealed might warrant some considerations towards insects and vermin.

If you are going to shove a NAS in that rather than say your office to share back to the rest of the house then that can change things a bit.
Also if it is a new build be careful messing with the wires too much if they do go through walls -- a lot of them and consequently your insurance company get a bit touchy if you mess with the vapour barriers** too much.

**20 years ago it was all generally just stapled up, today they are so picky you have to do glues and overlapping joints/cover bands if you do use staples (which probably also have to be fancy ones).

I would have to see.

 

[tech3475]

When I was wiring my house for ethernet, I just socketed the new connections on the wall and had cables coming out running to my switch rather than go for a full patch panel.

This also means I can change the cables inside the house relatively easily rather than worrying about the cable outside.