I am wondering whether I could use the setup I have in my lounge. From the unmanaged switch I run a 7M Cat5 cable to a Netgear WAP, with ethernet ports. This provides WiFi to my lounge and ethernet to my hifi receiver; this has built-in ChromeCast Audio.

I could terminate the Cat5 cable near the Ring doorbell; as in my original suggestion. Plug that cable into a WAP, with ethernet ports. The fit an ethernet plug on the Cat5 cable going to the conservatory and plug that into the new WAP.

Would that work?

I cannot get the conservatory Cat5 cable to the lounge WAP without similar problems to adding another cable to the doorbell location.

It should do (if I’m understanding your description).

The easiest way to test is to just mock it up quickly using short direct RJ45 patchleads to plug everything into the hub, WAP and cable modern the way you desire and make sure it all works.

If everything is working correctly, then transfer your mock-up to the real world by replacing each patch lead connection with its real world cable run. Even if each cable run has a few RJ45 plugs and sockets/jack ‘interconnects’ along its path, for your relatively short lengths it should be fine, as long as each cable path maintains a straight contiguous connection for each pin/pair. If you had a cheap 4-pair network cable tester it would help to test and check all your connections are correct once you’ve done all your terminations just to ensure you have no pin/pair mismatches or pair splits. It’s easily done, which is why it’s good to test.

You can't really inline a cat5 socket in a cable.

Best solution if you are against running another cat5 cable is get a AP with a built in switch (*Draytek AP810? springs to mind). Stop the first cat 5 cable at the AP/switch combo and then plug the rest of the cable into the switch port on the AP to create on the onward chain.


* or just use an old ISP router with DNS and DHCP turned off as your switch and AP

Edited by mbames (Sat 21-Aug-21 08:24:28)

This is the unit I use to run my lounge wifi and hifi; is this the same type as the Draytek?

Hopefully you got your cabling and setup sorted and the doorbell is Ring-ing (poor joke I know).

Well there had to be a Token joke somewhere.

😎😂

In reply to a post by MHC:

Well there had to be a Token joke somewhere.

That joke does net work.