Hi all,

The building works on our house have started, and now I've been looking into which type of ehernet cable I'll put inside my walls. The idea is that every room in the house will have at least 4 ethernet drops.

At first I thought to use regular Cat6 ethernet cable. But then I was thinking, I'll only do this ONCE. There is no way I'll ever be able to replace all the cables that will be put inside the walls if something better comes along in time... So So I figured I'd better make this future-proof. That's how I ended up with the idea of using Cat 6A cables, which are rated for speeds up to 10 Gigabit. That's about as future-proof as it gets right now I believe.

But I still have some questions:

1) I'm in doubt whether I should use regular, unshielded UTP cable, or maybe shielded STP cable (not plenum). I believe the extra shielding in the cable may benefit the signal quality, 'cause at some points inside the walls, dozens of these cables will run in it, all right next to each other. (and in some cases also next to or at least very close to electrical cables) Of course STP cable is a bit more expensive, but not all that much. I would like to ask your opinion if this extra investment will be worth it. Keep in mind that most likely at some point in time, my LAN will be upgraded to 10gigabit.

2) Is Cat6A is just like Cat6 ? I mean, I can use regular Cat6 certified RJ-45 connectors to crimp my cables with, right?

3) Cat 7 also exists, but I believe this still isn't a standard? It's also about twice the price of Cat 6a, which I don't really believe is worth it's price, because I will probably also need to use a different (read:more expensive) type of RJ-45 connectors with it, correct? What exactly are the benefits of using Cat7 over Cat6a?

Thanks for any info you can provide.

Cheers!