installing cat6 via leviton structured media center

CAT6 didn't quite make it into the residential cabling yet. The added expense of CAT6, hardly justifiable in commercial, simply makes no sense in residential environment due to much shorter runs and, to be honest, less demanding applications. I would downgrade.

Perhaps you should consider why you want to use CAT6 in the first place?

To be "CAT6" *all* parts have to be built for this and some CAT6 cables are bulky enough that without custom gear in both ends you won't get a reliable signal through.

There's a reason why CAT5E is still the standard in most places, it handles even gigabit ethernet perfectly at up to 100m, it's MUCH cheaper and vastly simpler to work with.

And don't expect CAT6 to allow you to run gigabit ethernet much beyond

100m, so that's no reason to pay the extra price for that either.

A lot of people were trying to sell CAT6 based on "future compability" which makes much less sense for a home network and besides we now know that the answer to that is "yes, as long as the total run is a max of

55m" (which isn't what all the salescritters was saying). CAT6A is needed for the full 100m reach. 55m is usable for some things but I expect it to take a quite a while before 10GBASE-T see widespread usage outside backbones (it's not even reached there yet and 1000Base-T is "sufficient" for most other purposes and already cheap).

I tried to have the owner consider cat 5 for pretty much the same reasons, but his brother insisted that cat 6 would be much better. Since I am not paying for materials, price is not an object.... but i am still having a hard time finding the right supplies to go with my leviton boxes..

What do you mean "some CAT6 cables are bulky enough that without custom gear in both ends you won't get a reliable signal through"?

I know that all components of the system have to be cat6 to really be cat6, but what happens if I use cat5e components, is it not going to work correctly, if even at all? That seems a bit obsurd to me, but I am not sure.

Thank you for your help!

Because they don't support Cat6 wiring.. In order to do it properly, you'd need to have all components end-to-end support it. Its highly unlikely that anybody would come back later and terminate it on cat6 jacks/patchcable after its in place. They are going to rip and replace if they really want to do it.

Cat6 wire is bigger, 23AWG typically instead of 24AWG. It might not punch down reliably on stuff designed for Cat5/5e which is 24AWG.

It should work, baring that the 23AWG issue doesn't affect you.

How likely is it that short/tiny runs of 10G ethernet is needed in a house? Does it really justify the $30-$50 a box more for it? How likely is that 10G ethernet over copper wiring will work on cat6 instead of some of the other cable solutions that others are pushing?

(snip)

I would expect it to work better, but you never know for sure. Smaller wire might be too loose in a larger punch down terminal.

For shorter runs it will probably work even with Cat5 or Cat5e wire. Attenuation is exponential, and gets worse at higher frequencies.

For the usual house size, I would say there is a good chance that

10G would work over Cat5E wire when Cat6 was required for large buildings. That is, not knowing the specifics of 10G, but 100m runs should be rare for most houses.

-- glen

10GBASE-T cuts that run size in almost half on cat6 wire. Still 55m might be covering most house installations.

You have to install cat6a wire to get 100m for 10GBASE-T runs.

If that all works out when real-world hardware ships.

Doug McIntyre wrote in part:

Interesting. I haven't been following 10G that closely. Is this with RJ type connectors and T-568B patterns? I'd be amazed.

-- Robert

Yes, but the cat6 RJ45 type connectors are vastly different than the older style. The pairs stay more together, and are staggered within the plugs. Looks more like this inside..

o o o o o o o o

The patch panels are much the same, although with even tighter tolerances than before.

(snip)

I think even 55m is long for 98% of the houses I know of. Also, the question of alien crosstalk (between cables) is less likely to occur in house wiring.

Well, there is always that.

-- glen

Sorry if I did not hit this post in time but I would go with a wall panel that has a wood back and use 12 port wall mount patch panels.

take look our 10G jack and panel. reach 10G is not that diffcult.

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