[SGVLUG] Buying a spool of ethernet wire - cat5e or cat6? Copper or aluminum? Where? How much?

[Christopher Smith]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:
> I finally used up my old spool of cat5 (loaning it to
> friends, wiring up my garage, etc.), and
> I need to wire up some network outlets in my new house
> (powerline networking #fail).  So time to buy a new
> spool.
>
> That brings up a few questions:
>
> 1) cat5e, or cat6?  cat5e should be sufficient for gigabit.

cat6 is obviously more resilient in the face of real world problems
that have a habit of showing up in home wiring. There are some caveats
that I've heard from others:

- Cat6 cables are heaving, thicker, and less flexible (mostly a good
thing, but can cause problems)
- Cat5e connectors & jacks are technically out of compliance with
Cat6, though Cat6 connectors/jacks work with Cat5e. From what I hear,
it works with Cat5e stuff, but you lose some signal. So, even if you
don't get Cat6 cable to start with, you might consider deploying Cat6
jacks so you don't have to redo it later.

> 2) Copper, or copper-clad-aluminum?  Aluminum would probably be
> annoyingly stiff.

What, no fibre? ;-)

> 3) Where to get it?  (My local electronics store, the one on Olympic
> in Koreatown,
> no longer does retail.  Fry's says they have cat5e for $110 for a 1000' roll,
> but don't say whether it's copper.)

Everyone always talks about monoprice.com. They definitely have a
pretty insane selection.

-- 
Chris