I finally ran some CAT5 through my house and set up my DSL router last night. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be–I was actually worried about crimping the ends on the cables more than anything, but I managed to make three cables of various lengths without screwing anything up. Now I just have to configure the router so HTTP and FTP services can be seen from outside the network–I’m actually considering reading the user’s manual for that. =)
It’d be fun to try and run a cable along the fence to my mom’s house, but it might be too far for it to work. Each of our property lines are 213 feet long front-to-back, and they meet along the back fence, but from the back of my house to the back of her house must be less than 250 feet. So it might work, but I don’t know if I’d want to buy a whole box of cable just to find out. Besides, my ISP probably wouldn’t be too happy if they were to find out about it.