Best way to connect my PC in basement to router on the first floor

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C

Chibified

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Aug 9, 2015
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Hi,

I recently moved and decided to put my desktop PC in the basement of the home. My problem is that I want to connect my PC to my router via ethernet, but I also want Wi-Fi coverage throughout the home.

The house has several outlets that contain one Cat5e jack and one coaxial cable jack. I connected my router to a coaxial jack that's right behind my PC (basement) but I believe it isn't "activated". I found that all of these Cat5e-coax outlets in the basement are not working or connected properly (sorry if I sound nooby.. I have no knowledge on how the cables run). However, I have found an outlet on the first floor that works fine - as the router powered up and worked properly after a minute or two.

I'm currently thinking that I should leave the router on the first floor (it seems to be the best place to put it) - but I somehow need to "activate" the outlets in the basement and connect my ethernet cable to the router. I'm not sure how the Cat5e jacks are interconnected, but if things don't go too well, I can always purchase a really long ethernet cable. I believe I can contact my provider (Comcast xfinity) to sort this out - not sure if it will cost a lot though.

Thanks for reading (and sorry again if any of this sounds bad)
 
Solution
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There likely is a central panel someplace in your house that all these wires go to. Some look like metal doors in the wall in a closet but many times they are just on the wall in a garage.

You should be able to place a switch at that location and activate all the wall jacks in the house. Since your internet comes in via COAX you could leave the router where it is and then plug a LAN port into the ethernet wall jack in that room. It would then connect back to the switch in the central location and provide Internet to all the other rooms.

The challenge will be finding the central box and then figuring out which cable goes where. If you are very lucky they may have all of them marked. You could though just blindly plug all...
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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There likely is a central panel someplace in your house that all these wires go to. Some look like metal doors in the wall in a closet but many times they are just on the wall in a garage.

You should be able to place a switch at that location and activate all the wall jacks in the house. Since your internet comes in via COAX you could leave the router where it is and then plug a LAN port into the ethernet wall jack in that room. It would then connect back to the switch in the central location and provide Internet to all the other rooms.

The challenge will be finding the central box and then figuring out which cable goes where. If you are very lucky they may have all of them marked. You could though just blindly plug all the ethernet cable into a switch and when you plug things into the wall jacks you could see what port came on in the switch.
 
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Chibified

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Aug 9, 2015
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4,510


Hey,

A Comcast technician came over (it was free) and showed me how to wire everything - there was a room in the basement that had the cable box with all of the cables labeled (luckily). I currently have my personal router downstairs (hardwired ethernet connection to my PC) and the xfinity wireless gateway upstairs. I ran a speed test and got 90mbps, which is really nice considering my family's paying for 100mbps.

Your comment was pretty much the same procedure that the technician came and did - so I decided to give you the best answer.
 
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