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[michty_me]

Is something like this a reasonable price?

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F161002261645

Ideally looking to hang on the wall in the cupboard or potentially sit on the floor at the back of it.

[DaveC]

That seems a reasonable price, although you may not really need the power strip or brush panel. 

Do you not have room for a more standard 19" cabinet?  This would give you a much wider choice, and would probably be cheaper (or at worse, the same price).  As well as a little more breathing room, this would also give you the future option of rack-mounted switches, routers etc, if you wanted to get something a little more "professional".

TP-Link for example do some cheap 19" rack-mountable switches, but I've never seen anything that is compatible with a 10" rack.

[michty_me]

It was just really to keep everything tidy and safe in a cupboard. I will however look at the larger size. I get home tomorrow so I can do some measuring once I'm home for space.

[sevenlayermuddle]

Just to reiterate earlier comments, if you are entering territory where you need to rack mount equipment, you probably don’t want to put it in an unvented cupboard under the stairs.  You could install fans in the cupboard doors, but are you prepared for the noise nuisance?   And are you (or anybody here) qualified to do the maths for airflow requirements?

Appuratus that runs too hot will fail prematurely.   If you are lucky, it will just stop working.   If you are unlucky, failure mode might involve ignition of components, with possible fire hazards.

Imho Your main consideration, for an under stairs cupboard, needs to be cool running.  That equates to low power consumption, above all other considerations.

[michty_me]

Just to reiterate earlier comments, if you are entering territory where you need to rack mount equipment, you probably don’t want to put it in an unvented cupboard under the stairs.  You could install fans in the cupboard doors, but are you prepared for the noise nuisance?   And are you (or anybody here) qualified to do the maths for airflow requirements?

Appuratus that runs too hot will fail prematurely.   If you are lucky, it will just stop working.   If you are unlucky, failure mode might involve ignition of components, with possible fire hazards.

Imho Your main consideration, for an under stairs cupboard, needs to be cool running.  That equates to low power consumption, above all other considerations.

I totally agree, if it was going to require something that needed cooled, I wouldn't put it under the stairs. Too much risk there.
I only plan on having a small 8 port switch, modem and router in it but probably sit the wireless router outside on a shelf.
It was mainly to keep everything tidy.
I guess, I would need to but what I need and see how warm it runs out with a box first?

[michty_me]

This is proving more difficult than I first anticipated.
Luckily I have a pre cut hatch where I want to run the cables to but every location I want to go to appears to be blocked by multiple foundations. There are two across my living room so will need to lift several boards and probably most of the carpet.

Same with the other room downstairs.

Gave up for today after spending several hours trying to think on how to get round this.

[sevenlayermuddle]

A guy who worked for the same company I once did with used to moonlight doing structured cabling.  He offered useful advice, like using the boxing-in around a soil pipe to get from downstairs to upstairs, and using built-in wardrobes to get into the loft, then back again in a different room, maybe through a partition wall.

Point is...  to get from one room to another, any chance of going upstairs, around the loft, and downstairs again?   Cat 5 is cheap and, for gigabit ethernet, a 90 metre run will work just as well as a 2 metre run.

[michty_me]

Sorry for the delay, Been busy with work commitments so this took a bit of a back burner.
Having sat down and thought about it, I still think in this house, It will be easier to go through the floorboards. I'm currently looking to purchase this to create some little access hatches beside where I'm looking to pull in the cables.
It also saves me lifting or cutting full boards and gives me access in the future if anything goes wrong. Relatively cheap and a lot quicker compared to going and buying a board saw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFdvMmpjVpk

All my carpets will be coming up for replacing in the next few weeks so perfect time to get this done and dusted!!

[sevenlayermuddle]

Looks like a neat tool.   I can think of a number of occasions that I could have used it, over the years.

If you go through with this plan (sorry for pun), do let us know how well that cutter works.

[jelv]

Reminds me of an incident many years ago. I worked for a computer company in their OS support department. In the computer room it was a mess of cables behind the computers so the boss decided to tidy it up by making a cheap false floor from 3x2 wood with loose laid chipboard on top. He needed to make 3" diameter holes for the cables so brought in his drill from home and a circular cutter.

Unfortunately his drill was only a 250W, the cutter kept jamming in the chipboard and stalling the drill and before long he burnt out the drill (he wasn't exactly taking it easy which didn't help).

I offered to bring in my drill which had been upgraded to a 850W by Black and Decker. I told him that he wouldn't stall that.

The next day he had another go with my drill and attacked the task with the same lack of care. I was right in one respect, he didn't stall the drill. However the cutter did still jam - something had to give! There was an almighty bang and the cutter disintegrated in to scores of pieces which went all over the computer room. How no-one was hurt was a miracle!

I think he was lucky in one way - if the cutter hadn't exploded he'd have broken both wrists!

[michty_me]

Reminds me of an incident many years ago. I worked for a computer company in their OS support department. In the computer room it was a mess of cables behind the computers so the boss decided to tidy it up by making a cheap false floor from 3x2 wood with loose laid chipboard on top. He needed to make 3" diameter holes for the cables so brought in his drill from home and a circular cutter.

Unfortunately his drill was only a 250W, the cutter kept jamming in the chipboard and stalling the drill and before long he burnt out the drill (he wasn't exactly taking it easy which didn't help).

I offered to bring in my drill which had been upgraded to a 850W by Black and Decker. I told him that he wouldn't stall that.

The next day he had another go with my drill and attacked the task with the same lack of care. I was right in one respect, he didn't stall the drill. However the cutter did still jam - something had to give! There was an almighty bang and the cutter disintegrated in to scores of pieces which went all over the computer room. How no-one was hurt was a miracle!

I think he was lucky in one way - if the cutter hadn't exploded he'd have broken both wrists!

I've seen something similar on an oil rig but cutting through metal. The results were broken wrists though!

[michty_me]

Reviving this post again after its long hiatus.
Last night I had a few spare hours so with the assistance of my little brother, I have now managed to get 2 x cables in to my living room and 4 x cables into another room downstairs which houses the Playstation and Smart TV.
That floor cutter was a life saver and saved loads of faffing about.

Just need to do the upstairs runs now which after looking at it last night, I'm going to try and run the cables from the cupboard on the ground floor up through the wall into the loft where I'll then try drop back down into the room where my PC is and have another couple of pulls for AP's being situated in the loft.

[Weaver]

One suggestion, don’t know if this is applicable to you, but apologies if not.

I wished that I had run tubing, conduit, to make the run of future cables smooth. If at all possible I would put some sort of small piping or conduit in place, but it might make no sense in a particular situation.

If you can do so, run string though so you can pull additional cables through.

Consider running the best cable - highly over-specced - in case you need to upgrade one day. Of course this doesn’t matter if you can replace the cable easily.

Consider running additional cables through, for extra capacity future-proofing, and because it’s more hassle having to pull additional cables through later.

Don’t kink the cables, vital. (Especially with overall-foil-shield type posh cable as the foil will snap.) bending the cable to too small a radius will damage the noise resistance of the cable causing subtle errors data loss unreliability and slowness if you’re lucky, and it may or may not recover if you unbend. Don’t even bend cable temporarily.

Just a few thoughts. Things that I haven’t done as often as I should have.

[michty_me]

Hi weaver,

I already owned a 305m cable reel of cat5e cable so I just used that. The runs are quite easily accessable after using the floor saw to get access under the house.
I've put in additional cables to each area (one additional in the living room, 2 additional in the other room) and left the draw string there.
Unfortunately there isn't really any way I can put in conduit as I'm going under and through existing walls and floors. I do have some bits of conduit that I can utilise if needed though!!

[Weaver]

Good for you. Wish I had done the right thing when I had the chance.