Home Network

[Joshua.Elder]

I'm looking at buying a house soon and fixing it up and installing structured wiring for a home network and everything else. My delima is that I dont know if I should use cat 6 or cat 7. I wanna future proof it whenever i go to resell it in the future. Ill take any types or anything anybody knows. Thanks!

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id go cat7 if it doesn't cost much more, you don't know what you want to put down those wires in the future, and cat 7 can do 10gbe much better than cat6.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Use the highest cat available for how much you want to spend. If you can afford to use cat 7, use cat 7.

[Donut417]

5 hours ago, Joshua.Elder said:

I'm looking at buying a house soon and fixing it up and installing structured wiring for a home network and everything else. My delima is that I dont know if I should use cat 6 or cat 7. I wanna future proof it whenever i go to resell it in the future. Ill take any types or anything anybody knows. Thanks!

CAT 5e and Cat 6 will do 1 Gpbs at 100 Meters. Cat 6a and above should do 10 Gbps at 100 Meters. Just to be clear, 10 Gbps gear is hell of expensive. While you might be able to get an Adapter on the cheap, 10 Gbps switches can be up their in costs. So its really up to you on how far you want to take this. Mean, its probably just stick with Cat 6 as I do see us consumers needing 10 Gbps any time soon. 

[intertan]

14 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

CAT 5e and Cat 6 will do 1 Gpbs at 100 Meters. Cat 6a and above should do 10 Gbps at 100 Meters. Just to be clear, 10 Gbps gear is hell of expensive. While you might be able to get an Adapter on the cheap, 10 Gbps switches can be up their in costs. So its really up to you on how far you want to take this. Mean, its probably just stick with Cat 6 as I do see us consumers needing 10 Gbps any time soon. 

expensive now and over kill. But at the same time when the time comes to need 10gbps and the hardware is cheap the wiring is there.

 

I say go with what you can afford, another option is a conduit to allow you to pull, replace/add more cables in the future.

[skywake]

In a house most runs are going to be well under 100m so even pushing to 10Gbps cat6 should be fine. Also I know it's a bit of a tech no-no to say some spec is enough but... for consumers 10Gbps between rooms is a bit overkill. If 10Gbps makes sense for a home user at all it'll likely be more useful between say a NAS and your switch because a lot of devices are hitting your NAS. It makes less sense, for example, going out to your TV.

[Joshua.Elder]

3 hours ago, intertan said:

expensive now and over kill. But at the same time when the time comes to need 10gbps and the hardware is cheap the wiring is there.

 

I say go with what you can afford, another option is a conduit to allow you to pull, replace/add more cables in the future.

Now how would using conduit help? I have never seen anything that shows how to do that stuff. 

[intertan]

if you just run conduit to the device boxes you can add cable in latter and or upgrade in the future. Depending on your house even just running the conduit to the attic with a bigger conduit from the bsmt to the attic.

 

example

you have conduit with cat5e in it. 20+ years and fiber optic cable is the needed cable type. Just attach the new fiber optical cable to the cat5 and pull it back to the central location. cat5 cable gets damaged just pull a new one. need the cable modem in that location just fish in a new coax cable.

I have done this in some houses, it helps is areas that might need new upgraded cables in the near future. Tv locations, computer room, data room ect.

[suchamoneypit]

I don't see you physically even being able to saturate a Cat 6 cable's bandwidth anytime soon unless you moving around some serious sized files ALL the time, I think cabling in Cat 6 would guarantee really fast bandwidth for a very long time. It'll be years before regular devices even start fully supporting Cat 6 speeds, and Cat 6 seems to be 1/4th the cost of Cat 7.

[Canada EH]

4 hours ago, Donut417 said:

CAT 5e and Cat 6 will do 1 Gpbs at 100 Meters. Cat 6a and above should do 10 Gbps at 100 Meters. Just to be clear, 10 Gbps gear is hell of expensive. While you might be able to get an Adapter on the cheap, 10 Gbps switches can be up their in costs. So its really up to you on how far you want to take this. Mean, its probably just stick with Cat 6 as I do see us consumers needing 10 Gbps any time soon. 

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Southwire-1000-ft-Blue-23-4-CAT6-CMR-Riser-Cable-56918949/202316391

https://www.mouser.com/Wire-Cable/Multi-Conductor-Paired-Cables/Multi-Paired-Cables/_/N-9ms9z?P=1yzozas

Cat 6 1000' $150

Cat5e $94

cat7 is $500

https://www.primuscable.com/store/c/1013-CAT-7-Ethernet-Cable.aspx

https://www.mouser.com/Wire-Cable/Multi-Conductor-Paired-Cables/_/N-9lx96?Keyword=cat7&FS=True

[skywake]

On 17/03/2018 at 11:57 AM, suchamoneypit said:

I don't see you physically even being able to saturate a Cat 6 cable's bandwidth anytime soon unless you moving around some serious sized files ALL the time, I think cabling in Cat 6 would guarantee really fast bandwidth for a very long time. It'll be years before regular devices even start fully supporting Cat 6 speeds, and Cat 6 seems to be 1/4th the cost of Cat 7.

If we're being a bit pedantic here technically the category of the cable is really just a measure of the cable quality. You could in theory push 10Gbps through Cat5 if the cable was short enough and you could fail to link at 1Gbps if your Cat7 cable was too long or a bit dodgy. The hardware itself really doesn't care what cable you use as long as the signal can get through.

 

All of the official cable requirements? They list a cable length as well as the category of cable. None of them mention Cat7, the list is as follows:

 

100Mbps - Cat5 @ 100m

1Gbps - Cat5e @ 100m
2.5Gbps - Cat5e @ 100m
5Gbps - Cat6 @ 100m, Cat5e in "most use cases"
10Gbps - Cat 6A @ 100m, Cat6 @ 55m

25Gbps - Cat8 @ 30m
40Gbps - Cat 8 @ 30m

[Joshua.Elder]

Okay, I have another question. Does anyone make a patch panel that would for telephone use? Where it takes the phone cable from the demarc point inside the house and then wehre i can branch it off onto different areas. I guess that makes sense

 

[Joshua.Elder]

Basically a telephone distribution panel