Looking for opinions, need 8 wired LANs in one room

[AZ_Ron]

Hi All... Long time lurker, first time poster.
I'm looking to setup my family room as a computer/gaming
room for my family (6) and a couple extra ports for when friends
drop by. My house is pre wired for Cat5, except in that room.
A hard line could possibly be fished to that room, and connected to a hub/switch
but because of the way the house is laid out, would not be cheap, and would
entail dry wall repairs I'm sure.
I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good wireless gateway/hub
that would possibly handle the bandwidth of gaming and possibly streaming from
6-8 PC's, or if this is just a dumb idea and I really need to go wired.

Any comments are much appreciated!

Thanks!

Ron

 

[Hawkeye22]

I can't comment on wireless as I use all hard wired connections for my gaming pc's. If it's too hard to fish wire through the walls and depending on the location of your router, you may be able to run the line outside (bury in conduit if needed) and into the room you need. They make outdoor cat5. If the room is on your 1st floor and you have a basement, it may be easier to go down through the floor, running the cable along the basement ceiling, and pop it back up into the room you need.

 

[hang-the-9]

You may want to check into power line networking. From what I have been reading on here, the newer systems are a lot faster and more reliable than from years earlier.

 

[AZ_Ron]

Thanks for the replies. I wound up figuring kind of a work around...
I have an open loft, upstairs from the room I need networking in.
The loft has a CAT6 jack that was installed when the house was built.
I'm just going to run a thin 'track/run' from the loft, down a corner of
the room to the floor, and fish the cable under the carpeting.
I found a 'flat' CAT6 cable and picked up a 60' length that should be perfect.
This way I won't have to do dry wall repairs, or deal with Wireless.
I purchased a NetGear switch to hook the PC's to in the gaming room.

R