Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

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stan1
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Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by stan1 »

We are buying a new tract home that has a fixed menu of builder "upgrades". It is not a custom home so choices are limited by the builder but since we live in a VHCOL area nothing is cheap. We will live in the house for 15-25 years. We will transfer our property tax basis from our current house to the new house (CA Prop 60 for those of you familiar with it) so builder upgrades will not increase property value for purposes of assessment. The house is 2 stories with an attic that is generally inaccessible/obstructed so running cables later would be complicated. I prefer wired over wifi for security and to avoid interference with Bluetooth, cordless phones, and other wireless devices (which I've had with wifi in my current house). We do stream movies over the internet. My current house has 1990s Cat 5 cable that seems to work fine. No cable runs would be more than 60 feet, most under 40.

With that background I have two choices in the new house:

1) Cat 5e wiring is standard, each additional outlet beyond the first 4 is an additional $150 (we would want 4 more -- 1 in a TV loft and 3 in a room we would use as an office)
2) Upgrade to Cat 6 wiring/patch panel is $1025, each additional outlet beyond first 4 is an additional $225

So, in total:
Cat 5e = $600
Cat 6 = $1925

I'm leaning towards the Cat 5e -- thoughts?
Warning: I am about 80% satisficer (accepting of good enough) and 20% maximizer
ourbrooks
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by ourbrooks »

Smurf tubing, a.k.a. as flexible conduit is the answer but you may have to negotiate a bit for it. You can run Cat 5 through it now and, later, replace it with something else.
pincheeric
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by pincheeric »

That seems like a pretty crazy premium to pay to help future-proof your home.

I'm currently wiring up my own new home myself and can't imagine how they justify that price, other than just trying to make some extra bucks off of you. Consider, for example, that 1000 ft of in-wall rated Cat5e at Monoprice is $132 and Cat6 is $156. The added cost for the patch panel is minimal as well.

Maybe they'll let you supply the patch panel and cable and run it for the cost of the Cat5e? Doubt it, but never hurts to ask. You'd also need Cat6 keystone jacks.
MathWizard
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by MathWizard »

Cat 5e will provide gigabit speeds
that should provide plenty of bandwidth for home
consumption.

cat 6 could support 10 gigabit
We stream two 1080p screens at 13gigabit.

I'm not sure that my brain can handle sensory input at
10 gigabit.

Now if you become a server farm or ISP stream out content
you'll need lots of cat6.

If you could have ethernet run through conduit, then definitetly run
cat5e and upgrade to cat 6,7,8,... as needed.

I just upgraded my office connection to gigabit from 100Mb
Unless you move lots of files around, gigabit is overkill.

What is your interconnection right now?
mxs
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by mxs »

I agree with the above, it sounds like they are price gouging you, and you most likely won't need more than 5e. Depending on how it is run, it really isn't that hard to change it yourself later, just have to change the wire/jacks and chances are the price will come down as 6 or whatever you move to will be more standard by then.
alg0280
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by alg0280 »

I would go cat5e which is what I did recently in my home. Cat5e will support Gigabit ethernet which should cover most in home devices. Most likely in the event you find a reason to want 10 Gigabit Ethernet it will be between specific devices and you could always run a dedicated line for that in the future.

The other issue is that if you really want to future proof for 10 GigE you need to go Cat6A to get the full 100m distance support, in addition to needing Cat6A patch panels and Cat6A keystones.
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stan1
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by stan1 »

ourbrooks wrote:Smurf tubing, a.k.a. as flexible conduit is the answer but you may have to negotiate a bit for it. You can run Cat 5 through it now and, later, replace it with something else.
It's a tract house at a middle price point for new construction in my area, so customization is limited to what's on the fixed list of upgrades. I don't even want to think about what they would charge me for flex tube/conduit!
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stan1
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by stan1 »

MathWizard wrote:Cat 5e will provide gigabit speeds
that should provide plenty of bandwidth for home
consumption.

cat 6 could support 10 gigabit
We stream two 1080p screens at 13gigabit.

I just upgraded my office connection to gigabit from 100Mb
Unless you move lots of files around, gigabit is overkill.

What is your interconnection right now?
Good point, I left that out. We have a standard Time Warner internet connection at the current house which downloads pretty consistently at 16Mbps per speedtest.net. The new house will also be in Time Warner territory so I'm guessing it will be about the same. No data center on site. Cat 5e at 1Gbps should be fine with that network connection speed.

Thanks all for responses, seems like I can safely save a few bucks.
Warning: I am about 80% satisficer (accepting of good enough) and 20% maximizer
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magellan
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by magellan »

It might be worth trying to get them to run cat 6 cable, but terminate it to cat 5e standards. As another poster said, the raw cable cost isn't that different.

The higher cost may be legit, assuming they actually validate the install to cat 6 or cat 6a standards. Apparently, a cat 5e installation needs to run at 100 MHZ, while cat 6 runs at 250MHZ and cat 6a runs at 500MHZ. The crosstalk specs are also much more stringent with cat 6. Validating the install to cat 6 standards requires much more expensive test equipment and is less forgiving of sloppiness in both how the cables are run and how they're terminated.

As you say, you don't have a need for 10 gig ethernet capability throughout your house and cat 5e will probably be fine for the foreseeable future.
dhodson
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by dhodson »

Id try to provide them the cat6 cable
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by itstoomuch »

So, What is your relationship with your Provider? :annoyed
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Boglenaut
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by Boglenaut »

I couldn't even imagine running either Cat 5 or Cat 6. It just seems so 1990's.

I guess we have had better luck with WiFi.
LeeMKE
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by LeeMKE »

I only play a cybersecurity specialist on TV. But my understanding is that with the latest technology in packet handling, we receive many more pixels with fewer bytes, which is why WiFi has become more reliable and rich in streaming media. Unlikely the technology curve will bend to require bigger pipes for residential use. FWIW
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Boglenaut
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by Boglenaut »

Five years ago I used to have a coaxial cable bump under the carpet going to the TVs as well. That is long gone.

Phone cords disappeared about 10 or 12 years ago, but we still have a plate on the wall in the kitchen. A dummy phone sits there just to cover it.

What is it you are plugging in that needs to be wired?
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by Mudpuppy »

Normally I would say to go with cat6 for a brand new installation, but at that price premium, it's rather difficult to justify.

Also, make sure you are adhering to the CA Prop 60 eligibility requirement that the new property have an equal or lesser current market value compared to your current property. Your decisions on builder upgrades could be a factor there, unless the current market value of your current property greatly exceeds the market value of the property being built.
madbrain
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by madbrain »

Use Cat6 or Cat6a for the cable. Cat6 should be only 30% more than Cat5e, not 300%.

It seems like most of the extra cost is not coming from the cable, but the requirement for a new patch panel, vs keeping an old patch panel if using Cat 5e.

If so, maybe just upgrade the cable now, and upgrade the patch panel later on when you actually want to deploy 10 gigabit within your home. Patch panel cost will surely have dropped by then.

At this time, there aren't any 10gigabit networking interfaces on any consumer-level computer motherboards, so I think it will be a while.
I have been using 1gigabit wired ethernet for about 10 years at home, which is longer than the time I used 100 Mbit ethernet previously.

I have 802.11ac wireless as well, but the speed is still much less - there are peaks at 600 mbps or so. The LAN/WLAN speed matters when doing things like computer backups over the network. It doesn't matter for internet since ISP speed is much less , a couple of order of magnitudes less - I have a 12 Mbit connection, but I don't stream anything from the Internet. Nothing comes close to blu-ray for video.

I do stream blu-ray video from one computer to another within the home.
3D Blu-ray bitrate peaks around 40 Mbps . 4K Blu-ray will be over 100 Mbps.
This compares with video in the 3-6 Mbps range for Netflix HD for example.

Just not the same thing at all, it really shows on my home theater 106" screen with 7.4 sound. The streaming movies are basically unwatchable and unlistenable compared to Blu-ray.
johnubc
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by johnubc »

You plan on putting 3 of your 4 connections in the same room? Why not just one and install a hub or router? Put the other two connections into other rooms.
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stan1
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by stan1 »

johnubc wrote:You plan on putting 3 of your 4 connections in the same room? Why not just one and install a hub or router? Put the other two connections into other rooms.
The office will have one computer on one wall and two computers on the opposite wall. Its worth $150 to me to avoid running a cable around the perimeter of the room. The third drop will be in the walk in closet, which is where we will put networked printer/storage/etc. Idea is to help keep the office area decluttered. There will be two network switches as well.

When we sell the house in +/- 20 years none of this will matter, but making things more convenient for us during that time has value. I wouldn't be doing this is we were only going to be in the house 5 years.
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alg0280
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by alg0280 »

johnubc wrote:You plan on putting 3 of your 4 connections in the same room? Why not just one and install a hub or router? Put the other two connections into other rooms.
Every room in my house that got wiring added, got 4 drops. There is less likelihood of issues with fewer, larger centralized switches than distributed switches throughout the house. It is also really nice when you need two devices and don't need a switch that also needs to be powered. Once you are drilling holes and running the cables adding extra cables is easy, its the first one that takes the effort for every location.

As a side note, to all the comments suggesting wifi only, its really nice having video streaming running over wired connections. While most modern devices and services handle wifi relatively well, if you happen to have a ethernet jack where you TV location is you can plugin the device and it will be 100% reliable and you will never question whether the wifi is having issues. This also is somewhat dependent on how close houses are together which determines how much interference you get from wifi in other houses.

My personal philosophy is devices that are mobile are on wifi but any device that is located in one physical location (TV, etc) gets ethernet if its at all possible to get wiring to that location.
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by flybynite »

alg0280 wrote:
johnubc wrote:You plan on putting 3 of your 4 connections in the same room? Why not just one and install a hub or router? Put the other two connections into other rooms.
Every room in my house that got wiring added, got 4 drops. There is less likelihood of issues with fewer, larger centralized switches than distributed switches throughout the house. It is also really nice when you need two devices and don't need a switch that also needs to be powered. Once you are drilling holes and running the cables adding extra cables is easy, its the first one that takes the effort for every location.

As a side note, to all the comments suggesting wifi only, its really nice having video streaming running over wired connections. While most modern devices and services handle wifi relatively well, if you happen to have a ethernet jack where you TV location is you can plugin the device and it will be 100% reliable and you will never question whether the wifi is having issues. This also is somewhat dependent on how close houses are together which determines how much interference you get from wifi in other houses.

My personal philosophy is devices that are mobile are on wifi but any device that is located in one physical location (TV, etc) gets ethernet if its at all possible to get wiring to that location.
Somewhat in the field :-) These are some good points, also please keep in mind the average consumer streams video from the Internet as opposed to other computers in the house, if you run Cat5E that should cover expected Internet facing speeds for the next 10 years. Also for every computer you wire as alg0280 suggests, the wireless in your house is that much better for the mobile computers. Definitely try to wire appliances that you stream to TV regularly (Blu-Ray/TV/AppleTV/etc...). Cat6 is a bet on 10GE copper connections becoming widely offered in appliances and computers in coming years, this seems a bit unlikely to me as consumer facing stuff is moving to wireless only (removing RJ45 ports altogether) while server farm stuff is optimized around Twinax or fiber depending on distance.
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stan1
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by stan1 »

Mudpuppy wrote: Also, make sure you are adhering to the CA Prop 60 eligibility requirement that the new property have an equal or lesser current market value compared to your current property. Your decisions on builder upgrades could be a factor there, unless the current market value of your current property greatly exceeds the market value of the property being built.
Yes, new house will be $80-$100K less than estimated sales price of current house. We will put the current house up for sale about about 14 weeks before move in date with a rent back. Current house should get multiple offers with 50+% cash (typical for neighborhood).
Warning: I am about 80% satisficer (accepting of good enough) and 20% maximizer
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Toons
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by Toons »

Cat5 will suffice :happy
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by mmmodem »

I moved into a new home build last week and was presented the same extraordinary costs to run Ethernet cables. I declined.

I'm currently using Wireless AC and Powerline adapters for my older Ethernet only Xbox 360. I don't get anywhere near gigabit speeds but I don't need it either. It's easy to mitigate wireless interference by changing the channel of the connection. I have no 4k devices but at the 15 mbits requirement, my setup easily exceeds that.

Keep in mind, a few years ago, wireless B was all the rage at 11 mbits. Wireless technology and powerline adapters are making Ethernet cables obsolete for the casual home user, IMO.
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by wfrobinette »

mmmodem wrote:I moved into a new home build last week and was presented the same extraordinary costs to run Ethernet cables. I declined.

I'm currently using Wireless AC and Powerline adapters for my older Ethernet only Xbox 360. I don't get anywhere near gigabit speeds but I don't need it either. It's easy to mitigate wireless interference by changing the channel of the connection. I have no 4k devices but at the 15 mbits requirement, my setup easily exceeds that.

Keep in mind, a few years ago, wireless B was all the rage at 11 mbits. Wireless technology and powerline adapters are making Ethernet cables obsolete for the casual home user, IMO.
I agree. 2 to 3 access point l(one dedicated to video and the other data) wireless should suffice.
autonomy
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by autonomy »

I upgraded my in-network transfer speeds to theoretical max 300Mbps by getting an 802.11n router (laptop already supported the n standard). 802.11ac is theoretically capable of 7Gbps.

There is nothing I can think of for even an above-average household other than 4K video or hosting a server that would not be served by WiFi or Cat5.

:sharebeer
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by alg0280 »

autonomy wrote:I upgraded my in-network transfer speeds to theoretical max 300Mbps by getting an 802.11n router (laptop already supported the n standard). 802.11ac is theoretically capable of 7Gbps.
Not to derail this thread but the speeds advertised by wireless vendors are not theoretical throughput maximums. They are link level phy/symbol rates and include all the overhead to run the 802.11 protocol. Best case scenarios on 802.11 devices for actual throughput is about half the phy rate, and in all practicality a lot lower especially when talking about the high end 802.11ac specs. It really is a questionable marketing practice that has existed for a long time now.
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ccf
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by ccf »

For my own house, I ran cat 6 to each floor terminating in the room that is most likely to suck bandwidth (basement office, TV room, master) I mainly did this so I could put a wireless router on each floor and get a satisfactory signal.

At those prices I'd just stick with the 5e.
Last edited by ccf on Thu May 14, 2015 9:30 am, edited 2 times in total.
alg0280
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by alg0280 »

ccf wrote:For my own house, I ran cat 6 to each floor terminating in the room that is most likely to suck bandwidth (basement office, TV room, master) I mainly did this so I could put a wireless router on each floor and get a satisfactory signal.
This is a great point. Even if you didn't ever hardwire any end user devices, having cat5e/cat6 throughout the house allows you to put multiple wireless APs throughout the house in the places that need them the most. This is probably the best way to improve wifi coverage.
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by takeshi »

Boglenaut wrote:I couldn't even imagine running either Cat 5 or Cat 6. It just seems so 1990's.

I guess we have had better luck with WiFi.
Needs and situations vary. WiFi working for you doesn't mean that it's a best fit for everyone. Whether it's the 90's or not is irrelevant. If one benefits from wired then one benefits from wired.
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8foot7
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by 8foot7 »

I would get them to run Cat6 and terminate it like Cat5. You might try to figure out who the sub is that will actually run the cable, meet them on install day, and give them the Cat6 cable and a $100 bill to not ask questions. Much easier to change out terminations/patch panels later than to do entirely new cable runs.
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magellan
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by magellan »

One other thought - It might be worth asking the builder if the same installer is used for cat 5e and for cat 6 and whether they use a device to certify that the installation meets spec.

Most electricians will run networking cable, but many don't have the gear or the know-how to verify that the installation meets spec. A device to certify a cat 5e cable installation costs around $500-1k and a device to certify a cat6 installation costs $5k-10k.

As long as the installer has the right gear, you probably don't need to worry. OTOH, if the installer is an electrician who doesn't know what a Fluke is, you might want to see if you can rent a certifier locally before you sign off on the punch list.
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by SimonJester »

Cat5e will be fine and will run upto 1gig speeds. Your bottleneck will be your Internet connection.
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by nordsteve »

The rationale for wired connections in your house is more around in building interconnect than high throughput internet connections.

To a first approximation, no one has cat6 in residential applications, so I think you're safe going with cat5e.

At my house, every fixed computer (and xbox and DVR) has a wired internet connection. In my office, my primary machines are two laptops. Both machines have wired connections. You really notice the difference when you're copying files between machines (e.g., copying photos or movies to the backup location).

Wired connections are particularly important if your home can see many WIFI access points (think apartment, condo, or small lot urban scenario), as you're sharing the physical bandwidth (not your connection, the layer below that) with nearby access points.
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by Mudpuppy »

stan1 wrote:
Mudpuppy wrote: Also, make sure you are adhering to the CA Prop 60 eligibility requirement that the new property have an equal or lesser current market value compared to your current property. Your decisions on builder upgrades could be a factor there, unless the current market value of your current property greatly exceeds the market value of the property being built.
Yes, new house will be $80-$100K less than estimated sales price of current house. We will put the current house up for sale about about 14 weeks before move in date with a rent back. Current house should get multiple offers with 50+% cash (typical for neighborhood).
Just be cautious. CA Prop 60 goes on market value as determined by the assessor's office, not the sales price. Most counties should be sending out the 2015/16 assessed values in the summer months, so you should be able to find out this year's assessment value within a few months. An alternative is to negotiate for a copy of the buyer's assessment report, if the buyer is seeking a mortgage. That report would also document the current market value of your current property.

I've also had relatively good luck at predicting the assessed value by tracking the sales in the neighborhood for the prior year and computing an average price per square foot. I then multiply the average price per square foot by my own square footage to arrive at the estimate. My neighborhood is fairly uniform, so this methodology works. It would not work well for a non-uniform neighborhood. And even then, some years the assessor's office is quite a bit below the my calculated sales average, which is great for property taxes, but not so great for Prop 60.

Edit: And by "buyer's assessment report", I meant the appraisal the buyer has to get for a mortgage. I had a momentary lapse in terminology this morning.
Last edited by Mudpuppy on Thu May 14, 2015 12:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
dpc
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by dpc »

I wouldn't pay much extra for Cat 6. Your installer is trying to gouge you. In most cases, you'd never see any benefit from Cat 6 since the rest of the system and your internet connection will never be even as fast as the Cat 5e spec. In reality, you'll probably be using wireless for nearly everything anyway.

A quote like that from a contractor would cause me to hire someone else.
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by Mudpuppy »

For everyone championing WiFi for video streaming, keep in mind that WiFi throughput is greatly affected by the number of neighboring devices operating in the same frequency band within range of your devices. The more competing base stations and stand-alone devices there are, the slower any individual device will operate as the "share the spectrum" options in WiFi kick in to make sure everyone gets a time slice to transmit, even if that happens infrequently. As an analogy, think of it like the difference between driving on a freeway in the middle of nowhere (no other WiFi stations competing) and driving on the freeway in Los Angeles (gridlock due to all the traffic).

My neighbor doesn't seem to understand this, and instead threw more repeaters and base stations at the problem (making it worse, not better). He also did not set up an efficient distribution of 802.11g subchannels across the units, so that makes matters even worse. The only thing the neighbor does right is he turns the whole set of access points off when he's not using them (which is why I know it's one house causing this issue and not just the cumulative effect of all the houses in the neighborhood, since I see them turn on and off as a collective).

I tried setting up an 802.11g WiFi connected computer to stream to the TV and could not stream anything without jitter (video freezing while buffering) when my neighbor had his access points on, because of all of the contention on the 2.4GHz channels. After determining that none of my neighbors are using the 5 GHz band, I ended up paying about $150 to upgrade to 802.11ac. But eventually my neighbors will also upgrade and that band will also start to get congested with traffic.

With wired connections, you have none of these concerns. The only contention at the station side is if the switch misbehaves (or gets tricked) and falls over to hub mode. Otherwise, it's just a matter of what the router and Internet modem can handle.
investor1
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by investor1 »

Put the router next to the TV. Plug any LAN cable you have into the TV, and connect the other end to the router. Use WiFi for everything else.
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by dumbmoney »

FYI, a forthcoming standard will allow 2.5 or 5 gigabits over Cat5 (they have belatedly realized that jumping from 1G to 10G was a mistake).

You won't regret wiring the house. Even if you end up using mainly WiFi, you can put WiFi access points anywhere you like, without using kludges like repeaters or powerline.
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cdevers
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by cdevers »

Many people have pointed out that Cat5 can support gigabit networking.

This is true.

The salient detail that isn’t being pointed out much is that Cat6 can support gigabit networking reliably. (And Cat6A does better still.)

It’s important to bear in mind that Cat5/Cat5e — especially if manually rather than factory terminated — is a lot more vulnerable to crosstalk problems than Cat6/Cat6A.

Where I work, we support customers doing high-end video production over Ethernet networks — high bandwidth, high definition, multiple clients, multiple streams per client, all real-time. As a practical matter, someone on a tight budget can get such a setup to work with Cat5 wiring, but at a noticeably higher rate of dropped packets / dropped frames, stuttering, retransmission, etc. Upgrading to Cat6/Cat6A tends to solve these problems — and especially so when the wiring is running with a trunk bundle with a bunch of other cables.

This is, admittedly, not the typical workload on a home network, but in five or ten years? Computers don’t exactly get slower & use less bandwidth as time goes on.

If you’re planning to be in the house for 15-25 years, I’d say the wiring upgrade is worth it, or at least set it up that you can upgrade easily in the future. My hunch is that within a few years, Cat5 will feel as constraining as dial-up modems do today.

(That said, the quoted rate for the Cat6 upgrade is pretty silly. As others suggested, I wonder if it would be possible to source the equipment yourself and have them install it, or have them skip cabling entirely & do the whole thing yourself after they’re done.)
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by CAP_theorem »

As a full time software developer who munges a lot of data I am biased. Don't try and get guess what you will use the bandwidth for 10 or 20 years from now. I value my time and my experience when dealing with tech since I do it all day every day so I wire everything without a second thought.

As has been mentioned if the setup is amenable to upgrading the wiring down the line then gigabit should be fine. Home internet may exceed gigabit in the not too distant future, but there aren't many applications for it since compression keeps you well below multiple-gigabits of throughput for the type of thing you might use it for in the home.

If upgrading down the line is harder absolutely go with highest bandwidth cable available.
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8foot7
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by 8foot7 »

CAP_theorem wrote:As a full time software developer who munges a lot of data I am biased. Don't try and get guess what you will use the bandwidth for 10 or 20 years from now. I value my time and my experience when dealing with tech since I do it all day every day so I wire everything without a second thought.

As has been mentioned if the setup is amenable to upgrading the wiring down the line then gigabit should be fine. Home internet may exceed gigabit in the not too distant future, but there aren't many applications for it since compression keeps you well below multiple-gigabits of throughput for the type of thing you might use it for in the home.

If upgrading down the line is harder absolutely go with highest bandwidth cable available.
This. "640k is enough for anyone."

If you have the opportunity to do this right, futureproof yourself as best you can--don't just settle for what's Good Enough for today's applications. In 15 years you may want to stream 4K videos of your dog from one room to another, or perhaps you will work from home and have a telepresence suite. Who knows.
jontherevelator
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by jontherevelator »

I just had Cat 6A installed on three floors of our existing home. They installed 19 ports throughout and ran all of the cabling to my utility area in the basement. The total cost was $600. Cat 5E would have been $500.

If you decide to get the higher speed cabling, skip Cat 6. Instead, get Cat 6A.
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LAlearning
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by LAlearning »

5e with AC!
I know nothing!
DVMResident
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by DVMResident »

Another future proof vote.

$1325 extra is nothing in the grand picture and everything will stream via the internet in the near future.
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Epsilon Delta
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by Epsilon Delta »

Cat 5e dates from 2001
Cat 6 dates from 2002
Cat 6a dates from 2008

The upgrade will only gain you a few years. I have seen hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on "futureproofing" that has never been used and was eventually abandoned in place. Don't spend money on tech you don't have plans to use immediately. If you don't finish the basement you'll be able to run the couple of cat 9 cables you actually need in 2030 for a couple of hundred bucks.
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magellan
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by magellan »

Epsilon Delta wrote:The upgrade will only gain you a few years. I have seen hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on "futureproofing" that has never been used and was eventually abandoned in place. Don't spend money on tech you don't have plans to use immediately.
This sounds too pessimistic to me. When we were having our house built in 1997, my dial up connection could barely do 56kbps and hardly anyone considered running an ethernet network in their house. Still, I figured what the heck and I ran at least 2 cat5 cables from the basement to every room in the house.

Fast forward 18 years and my home network currently has 13 devices on it including 2 printers, a tivo, a roku, a slingbox, an Obi110, a raspberry pi home monitor, an 802.11ac access point on the second floor, three ip cameras (more when I'm on vacation), a file server, and a router in the basement. Sure, I could use wireless for a lot of this, but why bother when there's a fast, reliable, and interference free ethernet port just a few feet away.

Even though the cable is plain old cat5, after rewiring with cat5e terminations, I get reliable gigabit connectivity where I need it (eg the 802.1ac router and the file server).
TravelGeek
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by TravelGeek »

stan1 wrote:[

The office will have one computer on one wall and two computers on the opposite wall. Its worth $150 to me to avoid running a cable around the perimeter of the room. The third drop will be in the walk in closet, which is where we will put networked printer/storage/etc. Idea is to help keep the office area decluttered. There will be two network switches as well.

When we sell the house in +/- 20 years none of this will matter, but making things more convenient for us during that time has value. I wouldn't be doing this is we were only going to be in the house 5 years.
Sounds just like my brand new house. Even the printer-in-the-closet detail :)

I had them run Cat6 into all rooms. Two ports everywhere except in my office, which has four ports (two in the closet). I have wifi for the tablets and various IoT devices (oven, fridge, thermostat, ...).

I always regretted that I didn't have our previous house wired this way during construction. 4K video streaming from Amazon Prime via 100 mbit fiber doesn't really need the speed the Ethernet would support... but I am not planning to move again for a long time and would rather not have to upgrade in 10 years.

I also had them put coax into each room, all connecting to the media closet where I have the patch panel, gigabit switch, router, and cable modem. That's also where the coax comes in from the street, but instead of getting cable TV, we cut the cord and and I put a $45 antenna in the media closet that sends 10 HD OTA channels to each room.
toast0
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by toast0 »

stan1 wrote:No cable runs would be more than 60 feet, most under 40.
Cat 5e = $600
Cat 6 = $1925
60 feet is 20 meters, which is pretty short; chances are good that good quality Cat 5e is going to exceed the Cat5e specifications, probably enough to let you run 10GBase-T (but don't quote me on it; I found a lot of people saying you could do it, but nothing official, and I don't have any 10GBase-T equipment to test with). If you can get Cat6 (or Cat6a) cable with Cat5e termination (or terminate yourself) for a little more, it's probably worth it, but if you have to do the whole shebang, it might not really be worth it. Also, by the time 10GBase-T gets down to consumer pricing, they may be able to run it on less quality cables. There also new middle of the road 2.5g and 5g standards that dumbmoney mentioned that will certainly run on Cat5e.
Luke Duke
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by Luke Duke »

I haven't read all of the responses...

They are ripping you off on the Cat 6. Cat6 cable is only about $25 more for a 1000ft spool. The keystones cost double ($1.50 vs $0.75
).

My personal preference would be for Cat6, but not at the markup that you are being quoted. If you can't get them to upgrade you for $100 more then I would opt for the Cat5e.
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Re: Home Internet - Cat 5e or Cat 6

Post by KlangFool »

TS,

1) Cat5e

2) I would run run cable and outlet more than 4.

3) In my house,

A) At the living room, I have 2 outlet to every walls. Hence, I do not have to run cable across the living room.

B) For every bedroom, I have 2 outlets to the room.

4) Cable can and do go bad. By having 2 outlets and cables, I do not have do anything if one of them go bad.

5) In addition, I have video (coax) cable to every bed room and 2 to the living room.

6) I paid $1,860 for 14 x Ethernet outlet and 8 x Video/Coax outlet

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