houses aren't datacentres though! Anndd a lot of business' don't have cat 6 - its hard enough to convince them that there server is about to blow up, let alone convince them that all the cable they have had fitted needs to come up and be replaced with a slightly different cable. maybe big business', but once again, houses are not big business'! so my point stands, if you got loads of money, cat 6 all the way, shielded if you want to pull your hair out terminating it. I appreciate all the input about cat 6 is good input, but I think you are forgetting this is someones house, not a datacentre or a large business.
Thanks all for the input. I think most of the comments make sense. My issue is spending a couple hundred quid now, before carpets go down, while we can take floorboards up, chase walls etc... or save a hundred quid and possibly want to do all of that in 5-10 years when Mrs Bouquet would chop my knackers off Boils down to whether, in 5-10 years, there'll be a requirement to change up. Will we be streaming SDAHD (super dooper awesome high def) content. Hmmmm
In my experience these are the same businesses that call up to complain their ADSL is down and that they are losing out on £10,000's/£100,000'/£1,000,000's in lost sales and then get sh***y when you point out that they are paying for a residential service and not a proper business service and really should have a leased line as a minimum if the internet outage would have that level of impact to them. Considering this is someones house I'd still say stick with cat 6 as a minimum. Cat 6 is spec'd to a higher standard than cat 5e. Providing everything used (cable/terminators/wall jacks/etc) are all to the same spec then cat 6 will out perform cat 5e, even at gig speeds. Due to the tighter twist on cat 6 and the higher gauge wire used vs cat 5e cross talk is also reduced. So as long as cable is not run too close to power lines then UTP will be a cheaper option than STP. Also Cat 5e can only support a maximum of 1000BASE-T. Cat 6 can support 10GBASE-T, while 6a would be a better option for 10GBASE-T due to better cable lengths and less crosstalk, Cat 6 would at least allow a better upgrade path to 10gig later on. SATA standards will improve in the next 10 years too, at least once, if not twice as a minimum. With this will come faster transfer speeds to HDs so in future we could see NAS units max out 1gig and 10gig networks easily, especially if the march to solid state storage continues at it's current pace. Who can say about uptake in 4k (or it's replacement) over the next 5 to 10 years? However if you can lay it now before carpets go down, I'd do it. As the only other time you will get this chance is when you next need to replace the carpets and how often does that happen? I also doubt you'll get the option to fit wall jacks and put the cables in the walls again. Once everything is in place it will be a simpler job to upgrade them in the future too. As such if you can afford it, go with cat 6 but plan ahead for a future replacement of the cable within the next 10 years.
ive streamed to wireless personally at 1920x1080 ( max res of tv ) and did not notice any quality of loss of sound ( Was some tv show that i aquired ), Working for the financial instituations as Server manager getting our financial controller to even let us purchase some wiring is like getting blood out of a stone. I recently did most of our own household in CAT6 its nice stuff but i dout its for everybody, Most people just dont consume the bandwidth on a day to day basis to merit its installation. Unless your running a home server with media on it that is accessed by multiple users you will never really see CAT5E struggle. Even a blue ray movie is only 22mb/sec bandwidth wise, if 5 people are streaming one cat5e may start to reach its limits but thats not going to happen often if at all. 10 years time sure there will be higher resolutions and tech would of improved alot in other areas, to help with the bandwidth uses.
I appreciate and understand that cat 6 is spec'd higher than cat 5e - but that doesnt automatically make it a better choice. You are pointing out differences in the cable - I was talking more from perspective that cost/performance/usage in a house environment lends itself better to cat5e than it does cat 6/6a. but it's all just my opinion
To those of you hating on wireless, try a half-decent system for anything but file transfers and it works 100% fine. I'm using a G-setup at home and it's good for about 4-5MB/s, which easily encompasses our internet connection, that's all I need it for. The printer is also WiFi and that works brilliantly too, the only thing that's a letdown is the Sky+ box, but a cheap access point sorted that out.
Same here - the only reason I went for cable is that I found accessing files (specifically pictures) on my server was painfully slow over wireless. For many people wireless is perfectly sufficient.
If it were me in your situation I would run 5e through plastic conduit all the way along the run, that way if you ever have a need to upgrade cable from the cheaper 5e option you can then just attach the new cable to the end of the old one and fingers crossed just pull it through the conduit fairly easily with little risk of snagging. I guess it depends on how much money and how much data you plan on transferring. I am running on a 10/100 3com switch at home, I run 5e and plan on upgrading to gbit next year but can't afford a 24 port switch at the minute. In a test I hooked pc and server to a 4 port gbit switch and saw little difference between cat 6 and cat 5e. Now before haters start hating, I'm not saying there are no performance benefits to cat 6, I'm sure there are. It is just that I have not seen any real benefit in a home scenario. As for IT and future proofing, i don't bother. I go on best value for money at the time. I then run with it until I need a change or performance drops too much. If I had the money to spend I'd probably buy different but at the time I got 2x305m boxes of cat 5e and 100 crimp ends for about 55 quid. At the time cat 6 was 90 quid for 305m. Value for money won through for me.
Spot on. I agree that Cat5e is fine for wiring up a house. 10gig was mentioned for future compatibility but this is way beyond the 5-10 year term that the OP mentions. Unless they are looking to moves large amounts of data around (100GB+) and will need 10gig in the future the difference in performance just isn't worth the cost.
But is the cost REALLY prohibitive? If Cat6 costs me £100 more than Cat5e...I'm not sure I'd have a problem with that. If it's going to cost £200 more, then things may become more unclear. I'll be staying away from wifi apart from my phone, tablet and laptop. My streaming devices, tv, dvd player will be hard wired. The cost of wiring just isn't worth the risk of hassle that comes with wireless. (and that's my personal choice...no amount of hating will change that ) Is Cat6 UTP ok? Or do I need another variant? What kind of terminators do I need? In a house do I need shielded? I do appreciate all of the input.
it really depends how much your putting in how much the price difference will be. assuming 24 runs of about 12.5m average you'll only need 1 drum of cable, 12 double sockets and a 24 port patch panel. The cable will cost you around £50 extra, the faceplate at least £2 extra (depending on your choice of plates), patch panel about an exta £10 so probably not going to cost you more than £100 extra in total. (but that's still £100 more than you need to spend if money is tight) UTP will be fine as long as you don't run the cables close to and in parrallel with your high voltage power or lights but if your going to pull up floor boards and run new chanels in the wall this shouldn't be a problem. even for an extra £100 I think your wasting your money as there's a pretty good chance that your not going to install these cables to Cat6 spec if your doing it yourself and have no experience to meet spec you need to be care of how many cables you bundle together, where they cross high voltage and most difficult the bend radius (at all times not just after they've been installed) Cat5e is cheaper and a lot more forgiving... don't get me wrong your cat6 network will work fine it just won't actually be any better than cat 5 if it's not properly and carefully installed. I do this for a living in high end residential properties and we almost never just run cat 6 it's a combination of cat 5 and cat 6 as it's so much more cost effective to do it that way and half the time what you end up runnign down the cable (phone, control, RS232 etc.) doesn't even need cat 5 let alone cat 6.
Cat6 UTP I think is fine. You need cat6 certified keystones, jacks and terminations - basically, you need everything from start to finish throughout the chain to be cat6 certified. You don't need shielded unless you have mental wiring or are planning to run your runs very close to any mains circuits - if you go want shielded, you need to get earthed socket boxes etc. If you just get cat 6 cable, but you terminate with just cat5 certified keystones jacks and terminations they that negates the point in buying the cat6 cable.
If you go shielded you can double the cost but in a house hold its not required. As others have said mixing cat 6 with cat 5 is best Easiest way run cat 6 to the 2 main areas upstairs downstairs then use cat5e from there you can always replace the cat5e stuff cheaply later on
