For years I've worked with 5 and 5e, in last few years I've seen 6A being punched down (at my work). I don't have tools to test /verify. Should I spend more $ and get a panel that "rests" the cable a bit?
My ultimate goal is to have each room wired with 3 ethernet drops and one coax drop.
reply to adamtech78 I just purchased a house a few months ago and had CAT-6 roughed into every room with the CATV outlets. Every CATV outlet in my house has one CAT-6, and I had 4 extra CAT-6 pulled to my office. Very much worth it.
All my cables are ran to my garage, with my router/switch and wireless setup mounted there. I purchased a 16 port patch panel similar to »www.bing.com/shopping/trendnet-1···ORM=HURE and then purchased keystone plates with CAT-6 keystone inserts for the outlets in the house.
I use a HP Procurve switch (gigabit, unmanaged), with an ASUS dark knight wireless router.
I enjoy my setup quite nicely. The tools used to test CAT-5 work with CAT-6. The only thing you will need different is a CAT-6 crimper (depending on which type of CAT-6 plugs you use, some of the plugs require a different crimper), but you shouldn't need to make any cables anyway if you do a patch panel/keystone approach and use premade patch cables. The punchdown tool for CAT5 works on CAT6.
reply to adamtech78 Punch down at the patch panel, keystone (that punch down on the "hidden" side) at the outlets. Buy a real punch tool. I've read that the "self terminating" keystones don't always make a good connection.
·
·