How to relocate your Internet connection in your house
A client of mine recently called me asking for help in relocating her Internet connection in her home. She had been using a bedroom as her office and wished to start using the bedrooms as, well... a bedroom.
The problem was her cable modem and wireless router were both wired in the existing office/bedroom. And she considered these a bit of an eye-sore for guests that might be staying in the newly furnished bedroom.
Luckily, the computer she used was a laptop which made things a little easier. Here's the choices I gave her:
Solution #1
Keep the cable modem and wireless router in the existing office/bedroom and then hide them under or behind a piece of furniture. Because her laptop was wireless it could still easily communicate back to the wireless router from any other room in her house.
Solution #2
Unplug the cable modem and wireless router and relocate them to the room designated as the new office. This may or may not warrant a call to the cable company depending on whether or not a cable jack exists in the new location and whether or not it is provisioned correctly for Internet data.
Unfortunately for my client, she had a couple of strikes against her given these two choices. She didn't want to hide the cable modem and wireless router in the existing bedroom and didn't have a cable jack in the new location.
But this didn't deter my client as she was willing to pony up the installation fees for a new cable jack installation from the cable company. Problem solved.
How about you? Have you ever needed to relocate your cable modem and/or wireless router? What problems did you run into? What creative solutions did you come up with? Leave a comment below and let me know.
2 comments for this blog post so far...
October 26, 2010 at 8:09 am
asudduth
a note on moving your cable modem to another cable jack. Most houses have a splitter somewhere (on the outside of the house) that splits the single cable line going to your house going to all the jacks in your house. Typically these splitters have one connection that has a strong signal than the others (If you look on the splitter they typically are labeled with the dB gain level that port provides) Typically the cable company will make sure your modem is on the strongest connection. When you move to a different room you may also want to verify you’re still on the strongest connection.
BTW, for me personally when I had my UVerse (vDSL) installed I had the RG (resendential gateway—basically the router) installed in a closet that I already happened to have power in. All networking equipment is out of sight… unless you’re getting clothes out of the closet!
October 27, 2010 at 9:30 pm
Patric Welch
@asudduth, thanks for the tip on making sure you have the strongest signal. Since most people won’t know if they have the strongest signal, I would stick with the recommendation to just call the cable company to make sure.
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