Cabling a new house with Cat5e

ubersonic

ubersonic

ubersonic

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A friend of mine is building a new house (well, it's triple the combined size of a pair of semis lol) and is planning to run Cat5e throughout it as he used to own an I.T firm in the 90's and has a dozen or so miles of Cat5e leftover. I feel he should be going Cat6/Cat6A instead for future proofing, am I right? and if so how do I go about arguing that?

Thanks.
 
Cat6 supports higher speeds than Cat5e. Whilst he probably won't see the benefit now, in the future he may do, so its much better to think ahead and future proof.
 
If he has the cat5e cables left over he may as well use them rather than spending money on cat6 cables. As far as I know, cat5e supports speeds of up to 1000Mbps which a home connection is unlikely to reach anytime soon.

Cat6 also has better shielding and is thicker (so it can be seen as more durable which can be helpful depending on the environment).

If he already has the cables I don't think theres much point in spending money on cat6 :)
 
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Are you guys certain about this as gigabit is pretty much the norm these days so it won't be long until 10GB starts migrating it's way in over the next few years. I was just worried that 4-5 years down the line he may not have enough bandwidth for streaming 4K from his NAS to his TV or something.
 
To be honest if the house is that big and it sounds pretty massive from your description, then there is going to be some pretty long runs of cable.
He's obviously not skint so I'd be doing it properly and future proofing it as much as possible because I wouldn't like the job of having to go around and replace that amount of cable in a few years time.
 
Cat5e will run 1000Mbps no problem the same as Cat6...it just isn't 'Certificated'.

Cat6 can be run over longer distances and has less CROSSTALK.

If it's being run internally and not being trucked along with power cables I would go with Cat5e...and it's FREE!
 
While your friend will probably be fine for the next handful of years with 5e, he is probably pretty confident of staying in that house a lot longer than that (as he is building it from scratch).

For this reason alone I would go with 6A just to be future-proofed - after all its not exactly like he has to scrape around for spare change:D
 
As others have said, if he already has the cable, what's he going to be doing that's going to max out 1000gb per second?
Stream 180 Ultra HD (2160p) movies simultaneously? :D
 
I think most has already been covered. Good quality cat5e can be as good as some of the cheap cat6 cables you see around. As said it comes down to certification and just means how much the cable was graded to handle.

If he already has the cable then it seems sensible to use it up for free.

I dont think cat6 cable is very expensive though, you can get a good quality belkin cat6 on a 100m drum for not a lot of money.

Comes down to cost and how much traffic is going to be on the network and the distance the cables cover, if you really wanted to future proof you could cable it all in fibre optic :P but that costs a lot.
 
Get Cat6.

A quick serach shows CCS cable prices..

Cat5e 305M £57.48
Cat6 305M £89.88

For the sake of £30, it's not worth considering the cheaper option.
 
Correct, was asked weeks ago, near same question (search does work).

The cost difference makes it worth getting Cat6 so you are sorted for a longer time.
 
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