Could I wire my home for internet easily? I want to put the modem (router??) in one room, but have every other room (6 rooms) wired for internet with the larger wire - the stuff where the plug looks like a large phone jack. As you can tell, I don't know much about this so if anyone can help me out or point me to a good site where I can do some reading I would realy appreciate it.
Where can I get the jacks and wires? Would Radio Shack have stuff like that? Best Buy?
I would also run phone and cable at the same time, so it's all run together, would that cause any problems running those wires together?

Why not go wireless.

I am wireless in my personal house. This house is a rental with college students, and not everyone has a wireless router. I figure if I wire it the right way once, I will never have to worry about it again. This is a really nice house, and I don't want them running wires all over and stapling them to the walls and such.
I plan to wire each room for cable and phone anyway, and I figured I may as well run the internet wires at the same time.

Answer is yes you can it's not bad. Find a common area for your may outside line and set up a small cabinet with your modem/router and maybe even a patch panel to make changes eaiser. That way you can patch in what ever rooms you want to the router, or leave some out. Run a line from the rounter patch panel (or just have a CAT6 cable end ) to a jack in each room. Biggest pain is wall access to keep it neat. If you have a basement it may be easier/more convienent to run the wiring through the basement and up through the floors, rather than fight aroun in the attic.

It's not a terribly tough job, it just has a few pains if your not use to running wiring in framing that already has the drywall up.

By the way they make face plates that have all three jacks in them, Cable (coax), RJ45 (network) and RJ11 (phone). You can run them all to the same box.

Thanks for the answer Bill. I was planning on running everything from the basement room that my power comes in to. This is where the phone comes in already too, so it would be a good room to run it all from.
What is the difference between CAT5 and CAT6? Is it just the speed? Is CAT6 the way I would want to go?
Also, I see that I can get what they are calling CAT 6 550 MHz Solid Plenum-Rated Cable or CAT 6 UTP Solid PVC Cable. Do you know the difference? The second one is half the price of the first.

Will an RJ12 work for a phone too?

Plenum is for running in the ceilings commercial buildings that have air returns and that sort of thing. It is insulated with something that does not give of poisonous gasses when it burns so that a small fire won't poison everyone in the building. You can use it, but you don't need it.

I have not bought any in a while, but I found my best price on bulk cable and connectors and stuff at Home Depot. Any home center should have that stuff. Places like Radio Shack and Best Buy will be too expensive.

Slonaker

I didn't read much of what anyone else posted.

Get a box of Cat5e at Home Depot. Cat6 is overkill. Cat5e can do gigabit speeds.

Plenum wire is really expensive and only required if running inside an air duct, it has a special coating that is non-toxic when it burns, so people won't get ill or die if a wire burns inside the duct.

Tips: Do NOT run network (CAT5) wire in parallel with high voltage wires for any length of time. A foot or two might not matter but run perpendicular to power wires where possible. DO NOT wire near fluorescent lights and/or ballasts. This might sound weird, but these items I am listing all put out EMI/noise that will interrupt the signals on the cables. Yoiu are welcome to run the Cat5 and tie it directly to phone lines. This will not cause problems at all and is an easy way to route things if the phone lines are in place. Please see more do's and don'ts here, scroll about halfway down this page: http://www.lanshack.com/cat5e-tutorial.aspx

If you have very few phone lines in the house and/or are doing a fresh install in a new house. You can take the Cat5e (8 wires total) and use the green wires and orange wires (4 total) for the network data, and the brown wires and blue wires for telephone (4 total). Use both blues for the red/green, both browns for the black/yellow would be one way to route it. I think telephone companies use blue for the main line and brown for secondary.

Here is your basic setup, from the jack back to the router/modem - all parts can be bought at Home Depot:

Get a 2-way "QuickPort" plate for your telephone box like this: http://www.smarthome.com/8551.html

Get a Keystone Cat5e jack for each required outlet in each room: http://www.lanshack.com/Cat-5E-Keystone-Jack-P16C56.aspx

Get a Keystone Cat3 jack for each required outlet in each room: http://www.firefold.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=CAT3-KJ-BGE

Leviton makes both the Cat3 and Cat5e...example of the jack, how to punch the wires into it, etc: http://www.smarthome.com/8555.html (See whole page). As you can see from the QuickPort plate, you simply take the the Keyston Jack and snap it into the plate - this makes your wiring easy. Make sure it's securely fastened. If you wanted, you could get a 3-port QuickPort plate and run Cable TV, Telephone and Network to each plate. I did this in my house.

Once you get your jacks installed, run your cabling with 1'-2' of extra cable hanging out of each wall box - it's better to have too much than too little extra! Terminate all of the Cat5e wire from each outlet to a cetral location. At that location, you will install a patch panel like this: http://www.lanshack.com/12-Port-Cat-5E-Patch-Panel-89D-Bracket-Mount--P15C57.aspx

You will terminate each wire into the patch panel, then you will then run patch cables from each patch panel port into your switch/router/modem. I suggest running into a multi-port Gigabit Ethernet switch, then into the router/modem/whatever.

You will need to buy a punchdown tool: http://auction.smarthome.com/XcAPViewItem.asp?ID=92903

When you find the punchdown tool, MAKE SURE it has a "110" blade with it (example: http://www.smarthome.com/9036.html )

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR. Go out and buy a cable tester that will allow you to pulg into a wall and test your runs. I can recommend a good one. Expect to spend a few bucks - it will save you a nightmare!

I need to know more about the modem your ISP is giving you to know whether it has multiple jacks/ports on it and it can be used as a router. A model number off the bottom will suffice.

There are some good wiring tips here: http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/cat5/

You can save a lot of money by running all of the wires to your termination points, getting the patch panel and outlet plates and jacks, then hiring a pro to come over and stitch it all up. This will save you the expense of buying tools and testers ($100-200), and you have someone to blame if it don't work.

- Quickport plate for each outlet box in each room.
- A Cat5e and a Cat3 Keystone jack for each box in each room.
- Decide in where your patch panel will terminate. I suggest a closet somewhere out of sight that you can install your modem into and have it operate (needs power and either cable/telephone in it for the signal)
- Install the patch panel in that area within a couple feet of the modem.
- Snake your wires from the patch panel to the box in each room, leave at least 1-2' of excess hanging out of it and a few extra feet on the patch panel/modem side. LABEL THE ENDS OF EACH WIRE AS YOU RUN THEM, THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT!! Label everything so you know where it goes!!
- Punchdown your wires to your Keystone jacks using 110 punchdown (blade side), and decide if you need to puchdown in "A" or "B" mode (the keystone jack is labelled).
- Punchdown each line into the patch panel with A or B move, as needed.
- Make or buy some short network cables to tie it all together. I typically use CablesToGo.com for the cheapest cables you will find anywhere. They are marked up 500% at your local Best Buy/Circuit City.
- Once wired, test each room for connectivity.

This is a ton of info to process. I do this wiring all the time at work. If you need help, please - shoot me a PM or something and I'll walk you through it over the phone.

PS: I failed to explain this, and it helps to understand what all the wires are inside the cable:

A Cat5* or Cat6* cable has 8 wires:

Orange
Orange w/white
Green
Green w/white
Blue
Blue w/white
Brown
Brown w/white

Each color has a pair with white stripe. Think of each as a power/ground, sort of? I think that's the easiest way to explain it, whether it's entirely 100% valid is another story, but I think most people find it easier to think of it like that.

For a basic full duplex 10-BaseT or 100-BaseT connection (10 or 100megabit), your green pair and orange pair are your "in" and "out", to put it in laymans terms. One "sends" data, the other "returns" it. If any of these four wires are not punched down correctly, you will not get a network connection!!

The blue and brown wires are a spare pair of wires used only for 1000-baseT connection, but if you aren't running gigabit network, you can use them for telephone jacks.

Just remember:
All 8 wires need to be punched down for Gigabit (1,000 megabit), but the user will need a Gigabit network card to use Gigabit speed.

You can run a basic 100 megabit connection with only 4 wires (orange and green pairs). All computers released in the past 10 years should support 100 megabit connections.

I said to dodge Cat6 earlier. It's a pain in the ass to work with from an RJ45 cable end perspective. It's not hard to punch down though. If you are not making cables, this is of no concern to you.

Buy jacks and parts online where you can, it can be as much as 20-30% cheaper, but consider cost of shipping.

Thanks for the help everyone. I will take some time to read everything and go from there.