Future proof cabling

D

drizzt81

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jan 21, 2004
Messages
12,361
Hello everybody,

my family is currently in the process of renovating, expanding two apartments that we own. As part of this, the electrical cabling will be renewed in the existing part and installed in the expansion.

Since we are not planning to do much renovating once the current measures are complete, we are considering to put in networking cable with the electrical. Given the huge labor cost in Germany (which is where these are located) changing anything in the future will be expensive, since we are not dealing with drywall.

Long story short, I have been wondering what type of networking solution to go for. From what I know, it appears that cat-6 has found its limitations at GbE and that 10GbE isn't going to allow for copper connections. As such I was considering a fiber (or fibre) solution, but I wouldn't even know what to consider? maybe something like "blown fiber"? Install conduit now and then whatever fiber will be "commonplace" when we reach the limitations of GbE?

I'd love to hear your suggestions.
 
Retrofitting a building does indeed suck. My recommendation is to spend more time worrying about the conduit and access panels instead of what cable you use. Cabling and technology is always changing but the conduit doesn't really move that much. I would just use cat6 because it would be cheaper. My reasoning is that you don't want to spend a fortune installing a cable only to have it become obsolete while the industry chooses a different kind of cable.

I think it's awesome that you are even considering futureproofing your building's cable because so many building owners go on the cheap and don't plan ahead AT ALL.
 
Agree....if worried about future proofing...run some conduit....and pull some string along with your current cable.
 
Another option would be CAT7, good for 10GbE over copper, as "future proof" as you can really get cable wise, but it's pretty pricey and hard to come by.
 
As the poster two above me noted, just make sure to pull some string along with whatever cable you run now and you can run new cable in the future for future standards easily.
 
thanks for the responses, I will see what options there are for running some form of conduit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top