Cat5 or 6 behind walls

[gabrod]

Hello to all,

Sorry if this has been asked in the past, I tried looking for couldn't find the right one (So much info! ), but here I go. I'm about to start ripping walls in my house with new ones and since am about to do that, I thought of myself, Hm.... Let network the whole house! 😛 but this are my concern:

1. What cable should I get? Cat5 or 6
2. Are these cable safe to run behind walls? any fire hazard??
3. What about grounding the cable, Do i need to ground it?
4. What can you recommend for when running cables behind walls.

Any idea that you have would be welcome here, so If you can give me your input, that would be nice. Remember I want to do this since I heard that this adds value to your house later on and for future tech also.

thank you all

Gabe.

 

[CDdude55]

I'm not fully versed in this area and look foward to more well verse answers, but:

1. I beileve it depends on what speed your end devices can utilize, if you are not working with very high speed then Cat5e cable should suffice. Cat6 is only benefical if speeds reach 1Gb.

2.I forgot what it is called, but there is a fire standard that some cables must meet to resist fires. It's fine to run them through the walls, but i am not sure if they meet fire safety standards.

3. No you shouldn't have to ground the cables.

4. Not much because i have never ran cables through walls before, but i figure it's similar to routing cables through almost anything else.

 

[gabrod]

Thanks CDdude55 for your quick reply.

Do you have any experiences on video cables? for home theater type things for furture things.?

Thank you.

 

[robertnewton]

Assuming and hoping that tearing down your walls is one time thing, I would overall recommend Cat6, to more future proof your home. It makes most since to me since Cat5, although still very efficient, has been around quite a long time and can very well become obsolete in the near future. I personally haven't heard of data cables like these ever causing a major hazard, only problems is interrupting signals when running with other cables (which is more rare than it sounds). Although i'm no expert, hope that helps a little bit.

 

[gabrod]

Thank you robertnewton for your answer

 

[robertnewton]

of course bro