Cat6A Advice: New Home - New Network!

[chrissp26]

Hi Guys!

I'm almost done buying a new home and need to start thinking about networking.

In my current house I have CAT5e running throughout. In the new house I want to up the game a bit as I'm likely to be in the new house for 10+ years so I want to ensure that i put in cabling that is as future proof as possible.

I've looked into CAT7 but its very pricey but CAT6a isn't too bad. With that in mind I have a couple of questions:

When i buy face plates do they need to be rated for Cat6a or are they all generic?

Where is a good place to buy the cable in the UK? I used to buy cabling from Ebay but I've not been too happy with the quality of some of the sellers. I would rather pay a little extra and get quality.

Also what is booted, unbooted and fully booted? I've seen it on a few sites selling cabling?

Many thanks for your advice.

Chris

 

[hudd09]

Hi,

Like most things you get what you pay for.

To guarantee best quality buy from places like RS or Farnells; or buy a known brand / specification of cable from a trade electrical outlet.

Not up on the various versions of Cat cable but you should soon find the info with a search.
http://www.belden.com/pdfs/prodbull/NP231.pdf

Think Booted just refers to the type of rubber cover over the ready made plugs.

 

[warmadmax]

yeap booted is the rubber "anti snag" they put on patch lead connections.

if you want Cat6 throughout, you need to use Cat6 throughout.
any Cat5e faceplates will pull that line down to the Cat5e standard.

to be honest though, i don't see any harm using Cat5e for faceplates and patch leads (socket to device fly lead) for now and put your cable runs through the house in Cat6.

that way if the need arises for Cat6, change the faceplates and make up / buy some cat6 patch leads.

Gigabit runs easily over 10 - 20m on Cat5e, plenty for most houses, not so well on 100 meters runs (like one run i've got at work).


are you going to be running back to a central wiring center?
if so have a look for a patch panel, this i'd get in Cat6 to match the wiring.

The layout we've got at work has over 160 ports, used for a mixture of telephones, network and even serial connections, all on Cat5E as the cable runs are a fair few years old now.
View media item 38170 View media item 38171

 

[Monkeh]

Gigabit runs easily over 10 - 20m on Cat5e, plenty for most houses, not so well on 100 meters runs (like one run i've got at work).

If you're having problems with gigabit at 100m, there is something wrong with your installation.

 

[warmadmax]

i wouldn't be suprised if the run is just over 100 meters,

its from one end of the building, through the warehouse close to electrics.
100mbit works fine, between the switches, next to no error rate, just wont keep gigabit link, never had the inclination to track down that one as it only runs a few wireless access points PoE. (lazyness again )

its more than likely one of the two inactive pairs on the link has a problem,
as 100mbit uses 2 pair, 1000mbit uses all 4 pairs.

 

[Monkeh]

It's also likely interference. Long runs past equipment should be FTP, not UTP.

 

[warmadmax]

yes, but have you seen how much FTP is, the boss did and said "UTP will be fine"

 

[Alarm]

LOL Typical.

 

[Monkeh]

LOL Typical.

Bosses, the only thing below lusers on the intelligence scale. With the possible exception of devs, of course.