This afternoon was a chaotic adventure in upgrading my home network to Gigabit Ethernet. I upgraded my wireless hub from 802.11g to 802.11N, and our internal network from 100mbit to GigE so I can move videos and music around the network faster.

From cabling issues to configuration problems, here’s some tips so that you never have to go through the troubles that I did.

1. Adventures in Layer one:  Don’t use home made cables!

If you must make them, ensure that you are crimping the ends of the cables to the same spec and that all four pairs of the cable are working correctly. I had a run coming from the studio, far away from where the main router is with a bad crimp. One dead pair caused the connection to fall back to 100mbit/s instead of 1000mbit/s, eliminating any advantage I’d gain from the new hardware.

Always purchase good quality, store bought, category five cables wired to the TIA 568A or B spec.

2. Always check the lower levels of the network before blaming higher ones.

In order of verification, your checks should go:

1. Layer one – Physical. Check your wiring.
2. Layer two – Ethernet. Make sure you have link, and that both sides of the link are at 1000 mbit
3. Layer four – IP: Make sure you have the right IP addresses in your network, and netmask. Ping hosts on your local network first, then try the router, then try internet based hosts. If you can get to the local network and not the Internet, check your default route.
4. DNS. Can you look up a hostname? Does it return the right address immediately without lag? If not check DNS settings and try again.

Once you’re sure the foundation of the network is fully functional, move on to higher level apps, like your browser.