House already wired with Cat5, trying to hook it all up

[Atichnell]

I am a novice so please forgive me if I sound ignorant on this thread, it's because I am.  I'm just trying to save the money of having a professional come out if there's any chance I can do this myself.  🙂

I moved into my house a few years ago and noticed there was cat5 wiring in 3 rooms.  I mentioned it to the Verizon tech who installed my router, but he said he'd have to install the router where my main computer would be set up, that he couldn't help me figure out the wiring.  I work from home but I didn't have a need for the cat5 wiring until recently when my office because my son's room.  I use a laptop, so at first I connected wirelessly.  But after a lot of headaches and getting disconnected, I was told that I needed to connect directly to the router because my work server sends too much data for a wireless signal to handle.  My router is currently still located in my sons room (and obviously I can't work from there), but I noticed the cat5 wiring and went searching.  I found where I'm assuming the previous owners had their router/hub set up.  It's in an unfinished part of our basement.  There is a coax and 3 cat5 cables running from one location.  I was able to trace the cat5 cables to the 3 jacks in other rooms.   I tried hooking my router up to the coax in the basement and it didn't work.  I tried tracing the coax, but after many hours of frustration, I lost it behind a finished wall.  Is there some trick to this that maybe I'm missing?  I'd love to just move the router to the basement, but I can't find the end of this coax to even try.

If there's no good solution for that situation, one of these 3 ethernet jacks is in my son's room.  My new office is in the finished half of my basement, and the cat5 cables are accessible through the wall by my desk.  If I leave the router in my son's room, can I hook the router to this wall jack, then hook my computer to the corresponding cable in my basement?  If so, how? 

Thanks in advance for any help!

[armond_in_nj1]

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Atichnell wrote:

 ... If I leave the router in my son's room, can I hook the router to this wall jack, then hook my computer to the corresponding cable in my basement?  If so, how? ...

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Easily done.

First connect one of the router LAN ports to the wall jack in the bedroom using a standard Ethernet cable (RJ-45).  Next, in the basement connect your computer to the same Ethernet cable that leads to the router.  There are two ways to do this, the second  being the best.

You may use a "union" that allows you to extend the cable to reach the computer.  This is a poor choice.  A much better way to do this is to use a small switch (for example http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156270 ).  Connect the Ethernet cable from the router to the "input" or "wan" socket on the switch (if there is one), then run an Ethernet cable from one of the LAN ports on the switch to the computer network socket.  You will be set to go.

Note that the second method also allows you to plug the other basement Ethernet cables into the switch to make them available at other locations.

[viafax999]

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@Atichnell wrote:

 I tried tracing the coax, but after many hours of frustration, I lost it behind a finished wall.  Is there some trick to this that maybe I'm missing?  I'd love to just move the router to the basement, but I can't find the end of this coax to even try.

Thanks in advance for any help!

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Armond's solution will be fine

or

you could just add a splitter to the coax from the ont and then run a new coax to the termination point of the cat5 cables and then move the router to that point