PC gurus...I have a question

[MacFromOK]

Ok feeling kinda stupid here. I cant get the TP-link to install the drivers from the CD.

There's a toilet paper link...?

 

[Tanis143]

Go to their website and download the updated drivers onto a flash drive then transfer to your desktop. Probably a windows conflict with the driver due the age of the driver on the CD.

 

[NightShade]

Yeah, always best to just chuck the CD in the trash. When it was pressed there were probably already updated drivers. If it still acts up contact their support people. If they can't figure it out link the driver download here and one of us may be able to extract the actual driver so you can just change it in the control panel vs messing with the auto installer if it is hanging.

 

[Snattlerake]

My place has 2 outlets in each room on opposite walls plus one in the kitchen area. If I was to go in and build every wall would probably have at least one outside of kitchens and bathrooms and the living room would have 3 or 4 on each wall. The way things are going we are only going to be more and more integrated. Figure TV, soundbar, game system and streaming device in the living room at the very least. And some places would get an extra one dropped into the ceiling for AP's near opposite ends of the house.

Back in the 90's I was on a construction site where the owner specified POTS, CAT5e, RG6 and fiber optic cable to each room in his house being built. This guy had a full sized basketball court in his basement. He was forward thinking. I'll bet the fiber optic cable wasn't used until 2010's though. If ever.

 

[NightShade]

Back in the 90's I was on a construction site where the owner specified POTS, CAT5e, RG6 and fiber optic cable to each room in his house being built. This guy had a full sized basketball court in his basement. He was forward thinking. I'll bet the fiber optic cable wasn't used until 2010's though. If ever.

Nice, I am using fiber now for my server and desktop and still have a couple NIC's I need to get optics and cables for. But yeah running fiber in the 90's probably wasn't worth it for a while, still nice if it was compatible with today's tech. But at the very least every house needs Ethernet and coax ran to every room and some rooms multiple connections and lots of power. If I ever wire somewhere up I will probably run the lights only for 4 to 6 rooms on a circuit just so that when you trip the outlet breakers you don't have to worry about the lights being out. And then for the living room I would probably run 1 walls on one circuit and have two circuits just to run the room. Leaves enough power for the monster tv and sound system of the future plus all the console's and other stuff. For my own place I would also run at least one OM3 pair to each point where there is an ethernet cable ran.

 

[Tanis143]

Nice, I am using fiber now for my server and desktop and still have a couple NIC's I need to get optics and cables for. But yeah running fiber in the 90's probably wasn't worth it for a while, still nice if it was compatible with today's tech. But at the very least every house needs Ethernet and coax ran to every room and some rooms multiple connections and lots of power. If I ever wire somewhere up I will probably run the lights only for 4 to 6 rooms on a circuit just so that when you trip the outlet breakers you don't have to worry about the lights being out. And then for the living room I would probably run 1 walls on one circuit and have two circuits just to run the room. Leaves enough power for the monster tv and sound system of the future plus all the console's and other stuff. For my own place I would also run at least one OM3 pair to each point where there is an ethernet cable ran.

Nah, no need to do that, just run conduit runs to each wall using at 1" conduit with chaser strings. Need to pull a new line? Easy, attach the new line to the chaser string as well as a second chaser string. Pull the old string through and you now have a new cable run with another chaser string for later. As far as the tv goes just wire up all the speakers in the house to one central point, have all the receivers go there with the cable boxes. At least, thats how I would run it. Of course, I wouldn't have a two story house, or at least a full two story.

 

[NightShade]

It works ok to run in conduit for some stuff but by the time you run a whole house and start pulling a bunch of cables you have a lot invested. Sure run conduit for some other stuff later but coax and ethernet run it bare and extra, by the time you get two ethernet and two coax to each point and then think about another cable you need to run 1.5 inch and then thinking about pulling another cable just makes me cringe especially on a long run. I would run conduit to the living room and from an outside point to my network closet but beyond that probably not much else.

Now some may ask why two coax and two ethernet. Well right now we may have cable, or maybe satellite but the future changes things. 15 years ago those two were the only game in town and cable was fine for everything but satellite would be an extra cost for local channels that were free OTA. So even then two would have been a good cost saver. What will tomorrow bring? Maybe we will need two antenna's to get programming from multiple points. ATSC 3.0 talks about multiple repeaters maybe you are on the fringe of two markets and want to grab different channels. Should you turn the antenna or just hard mount two with a switch or use your two tuner tv? And still if you have satellite or cable and want to use an antenna for something that is blacked out or that comes in better on antenna is an option.

Two ethernet, well to be honest for the media room, that would barely be enough unless you run a switch, which then you still have a single line that is limiting your speed and another box to run stuff through. Right now I have my smart tv, soundbar, PS3, computer, and WiFi AP all in the same area. I also work on computers from time to time and to be honest if I am doing other stuff it's easier to just have it there. But at the very least figure 3 to 4 ethernet lines minimum to the media center and two everywhere else so if you have a computer and a console, among other things they can have a full connection. Yes streaming is max 4k right now but that is only going to increase. It's a hare and hound situation, ATSC 3.0 is bringing 4K broadcasts so more and more tv's will be 4K and greater. The more stuff you run through the switch the harder it's going to be for the single line to keep up. And I can already bet a lot of people turn on their console's and when they start downloading updates the switch to the tv or netflix for a little bit instead of just waiting.

I may use more than the norm now but more and more devices are going to want connections and to be honest unless you live in an area without a neighbor withing 300 feet WiFi crosstalk is a PITA. Wired is always better than wireless no matter what, the reason why people put up with wireless is because the alternative is a whole lot more work than they are willing to deal with.

 

[Tanis143]

It works ok to run in conduit for some stuff but by the time you run a whole house and start pulling a bunch of cables you have a lot invested. Sure run conduit for some other stuff later but coax and ethernet run it bare and extra, by the time you get two ethernet and two coax to each point and then think about another cable you need to run 1.5 inch and then thinking about pulling another cable just makes me cringe especially on a long run. I would run conduit to the living room and from an outside point to my network closet but beyond that probably not much else.

Now some may ask why two coax and two ethernet. Well right now we may have cable, or maybe satellite but the future changes things. 15 years ago those two were the only game in town and cable was fine for everything but satellite would be an extra cost for local channels that were free OTA. So even then two would have been a good cost saver. What will tomorrow bring? Maybe we will need two antenna's to get programming from multiple points. ATSC 3.0 talks about multiple repeaters maybe you are on the fringe of two markets and want to grab different channels. Should you turn the antenna or just hard mount two with a switch or use your two tuner tv? And still if you have satellite or cable and want to use an antenna for something that is blacked out or that comes in better on antenna is an option.

Two ethernet, well to be honest for the media room, that would barely be enough unless you run a switch, which then you still have a single line that is limiting your speed and another box to run stuff through. Right now I have my smart tv, soundbar, PS3, computer, and WiFi AP all in the same area. I also work on computers from time to time and to be honest if I am doing other stuff it's easier to just have it there. But at the very least figure 3 to 4 ethernet lines minimum to the media center and two everywhere else so if you have a computer and a console, among other things they can have a full connection. Yes streaming is max 4k right now but that is only going to increase. It's a hare and hound situation, ATSC 3.0 is bringing 4K broadcasts so more and more tv's will be 4K and greater. The more stuff you run through the switch the harder it's going to be for the single line to keep up. And I can already bet a lot of people turn on their console's and when they start downloading updates the switch to the tv or netflix for a little bit instead of just waiting.

I may use more than the norm now but more and more devices are going to want connections and to be honest unless you live in an area without a neighbor withing 300 feet WiFi crosstalk is a PITA. Wired is always better than wireless no matter what, the reason why people put up with wireless is because the alternative is a whole lot more work than they are willing to deal with.

Having two ethernet and coax runs to one or two spots makes sense (I have 2 coax and 1 ethernet in the living room, and no not for sat, had the 2nd for playing around with antennas with a tuner card in a pc) but not for the whole house. With the way technology is going pretty soon you would only need 1 or 2 coax lines total for the whole house, the rest would be a mix of wifi and ethernet. Even cox is doing this now with IPTV, cloud based DVR and wireless/ethernet based clients with the internet gateway as the host. For the other rooms a 1" conduit would suffice for what you would need and would allow you to run cables where ever you need em. Personally I wouldn't run them all the way back to the split location, but rather from the room to the attic. Of course if I build a house now the house would be spray foamed for insulation which would make the attic much easier to work in as it wouldn't have loose insulation.

Its a pretty exciting time for telecommunications, well disregarding what all the major ISP's are doing to the traffic of course (my own employer meters bandwidth, something I'm partially against except I've seen what having 2-4 people sucking down bandwidth can do to a node). However if Cox goes node + 0 with their network, that should allow them to offer endless bandwidth. But, they get enough people willing to pay extra $ for unlimited bandwidth that I doubt they will remove that cap or make it higher.

 

[Snattlerake]

Nah, no need to do that, just run conduit runs to each wall using at 1" conduit with chaser strings. Need to pull a new line? Easy, attach the new line to the chaser string as well as a second chaser string. Pull the old string through and you now have a new cable run with another chaser string for later. As far as the tv goes just wire up all the speakers in the house to one central point, have all the receivers go there with the cable boxes. At least, thats how I would run it. Of course, I wouldn't have a two story house, or at least a full two story.

Seconds and thirds on pull strings are usually pretty hard because of the twisting of all the cables causing a lot of friction. Unless you lead a charmed life it is tough. You really have to go slow pulling in new cabling. I pulled a straight run 400 ft into an overhead 4 inch conduit that only had about 20 - 18 gauge 3 and 4 conductor and unbeknownst to me a fiber backbone. Well, guess who had to replace their fiber backbone because I burned through it. The second pull I used a can of silicone dry lube.

 

[Tanis143]

Seconds and thirds on pull strings are usually pretty hard because of the twisting of all the cables causing a lot of friction. Unless you lead a charmed life it is tough. You really have to go slow pulling in new cabling. I pulled a straight run 400 ft into an overhead 4 inch conduit that only had about 20 - 18 gauge 3 and 4 conductor and unbeknownst to me a fiber backbone. Well, guess who had to replace their fiber backbone because I burned through it. The second pull I used a can of silicone dry lube.

Yeah, but how often do you think a home would need a 2nd or 3rd wire pulled through the conduit unless you were replacing something? Usually it would be just a 1st, maybe second and runs would be typically 100-130' unless its a mansion. Besides, like I said, I wouldn't have it be conduit the entire way, just to an attic access from the outlet location. And I'm looking at this from a slightly different perspective. Most new homes I go to use crappy coax on the pre-wired runs and I've had to tell a few homeowners either I run all new wiring on the outside of the house or they will need to get the electricians to rerun the whole house, otherwise no service from us. Granted, that is rare that the ingress is that bad, but most wiring I've seen fails our limit of -40 db of ingress allowed. Typically I will still use it until it gets above -30 db. But it would be nice if those cables were run in such a way that they could be replaced easily. Not to mention how many times people have mounted their tv's and put a mount screw right through the coax. Even though the conduit would have been punctured as well, it would be easy to back that screw out, replace the coax and then have them remount the tv while being more careful.

As a cable tech pre-wired 2 story homes are the bane of our existence for the most part. Especially when the split location is in a place where you can not run an outside line to it and sat beats us there. Then I get to explain I'll have to run an outside wire on their brand new $400k home... This is why I advocate the use of conduit.