Router position

[RobTi]

Hi at the moment i have all my network terminating in the attic along with my phone point and server, now just got a new master socket fitted 1 floor down in the kitchen cupboard (changed from cable to adsl).

So i am now looking for help on how to reconnect this all up, the bt engineer left me enough phone cable to move the master back up into the attic and connect everythck up the way it was or i can use the cable to run a new phone extention up and connect back into the existing phone and then either pluig the router into the extention up there and everything else could reconnect the way it was

Or connect the router downstairs and run a cable upstairs and use a switch

Any ideas?

Thanks

[circuitmonkey]

I would vote for router/modem downstairs and switch/router in the attic.
Try to keep the RJ11 run to a minimum and having access to the modem in case a restart is needed is never a bad idea.

[RobTi]

Thanks for the quick reply, i should of said the router will be in an old cupboard in the kitchen which will have an american style fridge freezer in front of it, also the attic is actually 90% converted into a spare room.

Also is there not loss of performance if say 3 computers are trying to access the internet and its done through a switch with around 20m of single cable between the switch and the router, as you can tell i am lost when it comes to this

Thanks

[flearider]

so 3ft of RJ11 then cat5 from modem to switch... a long cat 5 is always better than a long rj11 or phone extention
or while your at it drill a few holes lift a few floor boards and just cat5 the house ..a days work and most rooms can be sorted ..

[circuitmonkey]

Keeping the modem close to the master socket should minimise the noise on the line so you should hopefully get a nice fast and stable internet connect.
Ethernet cable on the other hand isn't as prone to signal lost over the same kind of distances and the overall speed of the connection is about 5-6 times faster then your internet connection (100Mb ethernet compared to 16-20Mb) so even if you had 3 internet connections connecting 3 machines over one ethernet cable, you would still have capacity to spare.

[dave87]

Which xDSL service have you gone for? ADSL or VDSL (Infinity etc)?

If you have gone for VDSL it is only the modem that needs to sit next to the phone socket - the router can then be elsewhere (linked by CAT5/5e/6) without performance loss. As others have said it is line length that causes issues for ADSL and VDSL, so the closer to the master socket you can get the modem the better.

If you have gone for ADSL then chances are you'll have a combined modem and router, so the still worth following the above albeit with the caveat of having a switch upstairs instead of the router.