Networking – How to Connect Two Sets of Computers Within My Home Office So There’s No Cables On the Floor

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I have a group of five computers at one end of my home office and another group of four computers across the same room. All are hardwired on the same internal network. These cannot be consolidate or moved into one corner or closet. There just is not the space and it's just physically not possible.

There is one Internet router as provided by the local cable company. I have this connected to a LinkSys WRT54G2 broadband router. A Netgear DS108 8-port hub is connected the LinkSys. All computers either connect to the Netgear hub or to the LinkSys router. As of now, the WiFi from the LinkSys router is only ever used by my cell phone while at home.

This set up is annoying. At first I did not mind, but there are cables on the floor that I have to step over. These CAT5 cables connect one set of computers to the LinkSys or Netgear. I have to watch where visitors are walking or stepping to assure they don't trip.

How can I keep these computers on the same network and eliminate just those cables crossing the floor of my home office?

It seems easy to see my only option is to use some kind of wireless method, right?

Should I use WiFi NICs? Would this overwhelm the WiFi on the LinkSys?

(Although I did first search this site for similar questions, I could not readily find one. If you find one I missed, please share it's link.)

Thank you for any help.

Additional (01/27/2012 at 16:40:28 UTC)

This is a rented flat/apartment. I cannot pull up carpet, punch holes in walls, and there's no access to attic. Modifying the flat risks losing my 'security deposit'.

Best Answer

I would use powerline networking to link to a switch at the far end.

You can buy a pair of HomePlug units that plug into ordinary wall electric sockets. They will bridge the two ends of the room together without any cables lying on the floor.

Diagram of Homeplug network A combined homeplug adapater & ethernet switch

Related Solutions

How to setup home network with two routers (or “to not waste superb WiFi router in basement”)

There is no need to change the modem to 'router' mode.

You've described this topology:

===coax=== <WAN>
        cable modem
           <LAN> -------[ethernet switch]-------- <WAN>
                                             synology router
                                                  <LAN> --- etc.

In this situation, it doesn't matter whether devices connected directly to cable modem's switch will get public or private addresses, because you wouldn't want to have any devices connected there at all:

Your main reason for using the Synology router was its protection features, and connecting devices to the cable modem's switch would completely bypass the attic router.
From the attic router's perspective, the switch is on the "WAN" side. It is a separate network from your main LAN, it has separate addressing, and the Synology router does not serve DHCP on that interface. (Even if you statically configured the addresses to match Synology LAN, it wouldn't work as the devices would still be physically in the wrong network.)
Devices connected to this switch wouldn't be able to access your main Synology LAN, unless you configured a hole through its firewalls and security features. (Or you could use port forwarding to get into the LAN, but a home network that relies on port-forwarding inside the network is just not good design at all.)
Your main LAN would be able to access devices on this switch (as long as both routers use different subnet prefixes), but the Synology router would perform NAT on the connections, meaning these devices wouldn't see the real client IP addresses. This is just a minor issue (and in some routers a NAT exception can be configured), but it can be an annoyance depending on what exactly you run in the basement, and again – not great design.

If you need the switch because you must have Ethernet ports available in the basement, there's only one option: basement → attic → basement. Run one Ethernet cable from the modem directly to the router's WAN interface, and a second cable back from the router's LAN to the basement switch.

Once that's done, there is absolutely no advantage in having the modem in 'router' mode.

If you cannot run a second cable all the way, the same can be achieved using two managed switches with VLAN tagging:

On both switches, configure 1) one port in 'access' mode for the "WAN" vlan, 2) one port in 'trunk' or 'all VLANs tagged' mode; 3) the remaining ports in 'access' mode for the "LAN" vlan.
Install one switch in the basement, the other in the attic.
Connect the switches together using the "trunk" port.
On the attic switch, connect the designated "WAN" port to the router's WAN side, and one of the "LAN" ports to the router's LAN side.
On the basement switch, connect the designated "WAN" port to the cable modem's Ethernet output. (Use the remaining ports for whatever you like.)

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