Patch Panel recomendations for large home/home-office network. + Cat6a vs Cat7

[SpaceDaisy]

Hi,

We are having a house rewired before it becomes our home and as we work from home and are keen gamers we thought it would be prudent to have our home network plumbed in at the same time.

Our electrician has a technician who can make sure all the sockets etc are set up correctly and he's getting the cables and sockets for us. He'll also be setting the channels and cables into the walls for us at the same time as he makes the channels for the electric and TV aerial cabling. He would just like us to sort out a panel.

I've been doing some research and I'm starting to understand a little of what I might be needing but all the information I can find seems to suggest I'll really need a cabinet to put said patch panel into.

Now, the patch panel and switch will be going into our office, which is what would usually be the living room of the house. And when we, eventually, move out I don't expect the next home owner will be wanting practically the whole of the ground floor to be an office so we want something reasonably discreet. Also we will have visitors on occasion so we don't want wires on show.

Anyway, enough of the back ground....

• 
  Is there a patch panel that can be fixed into/onto the wall in the same manner as sockets can? Is this possible and can anyone recommend one?
  
  Is there any reason to try to get Cat7 installed rather than Cat6a? Would it make our eyes water by the difference in price?
  
  With there being so many variations in price of cabling (I saw Cat6e at anything from £250 per 500m up to £700 per 500m) what is the difference and should I be asking for cheap/expensive/something else?

Thanks for getting this far,

I hope someone can help.

 

[RealBeast]

I usually use Leviton patch panels and many can be wall mounted. Take a look at the pdf linked HERE. I've done some installs where I used a wall mount patch panel that was not in a closet or small wall cabinet, but that may not look as good in a living room with all the cables going to a switch. Also children and animals tend to mess with all the cables if they are accessible.

No reason at all to use anything above CAT5e or CAT6 for gigabit Ethernet. CAT6a or 7 are only needed for 10Gb Ethernet where runs are too long for CAT6 and provide no advantage for gigabit use.

 

[abailey]

How many connections are you talking about? You can get in wall jacks but you still have to have some where to put your switch and the cables between the two. A closet or something would be the best place.
Anyway if you want to put it where you are talking then maybe you could use something like this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DDH3X5Q?psc=1