My wife and I are considering building a home and I was wondering if there is anything from a home network standpoint that we should add to the internals of our home to help with: connection speeds, signal strength, etc? I was considering putting cat5 ports at every TV. We are also thinking of having a centralized media closet with our Mac Mini running our all or media and an airport extreme running the network. Unless someone has a better idea.
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Home Network Tips
- Thread starter wicked23
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The central closet is a great idea and not hard to do during construction. I would run something like this cable from the central closet to each room. That would give your 2X coax cables and 2X network cables in every room. Take a look at Leviton's home network products. They make some nice products from this at the upper end down to small 12x12" wall boxes just for networking gear.
Agreed.
And presumably you will want to consider the speakers and where you'd like them to go (ceiling or wall, etc). You may also want to consider factoring in potentially multiple zones from one receiver into other parts of the house, including maybe even a zone for the outside depending on your outdoor entertaining interests.
Also maybe running IR depending on your media needs (dvd player behind a closed door or for the Apple TV tucked behind wall mounted TV).
If the new Apple TVs include airport base capabilities, your plan should work well providing as many Wifi boadcast points as you need. Just review these locations and ensure any far-reaching areas that don't already get a TV, have a dedicated ac/cat6 setup.