Best cat 6 wall plates / terminals.

[Grant Gunderson]

My wife and I just purchased a new to us house, and I need to run some cat 6 cables, for my home office, baby cam, security cams as well as for the home theater setup. Who makes the best wall plates and terminals these days? In the past I've used levity but wondering if there was something better these days.

 

[zktk01]

Hubbel Makes great stuff

 

[AE2]

I like panduit but I believe that's over kill for use at home. I have good luck recently with monoprice keystones and icc coverplates. I used Tripp Lite hdmi and USB keystones recently as well. I remodeled a conference room with the parts I mentioned and everything is working great.

 

[23ford]

Doing this for a living I say Krone or Levi they are outstanding brands and will stand up to any abuse or stuff that happens. As for the cheap a## stuff home depot or lowes sells do waste your time. Those house brands are cheap cheap brands that do not always test out with a true network tester and if they do they will fail in a short time.

Krone is a German brand that is guaranteed for up to 500 terminations and the pins are at an angle so they grip the wire tighter. A cat 5E Krone jack will actually test out better that most C6 jacks on the market. And they are available on eslay at reasonable prices
Warning buy a krone punch down also to terminate them the 568B way.

Their punch down tool has cut off scissors and a pick if youneed it.

If you run the wire maybe you can find someone to terminate them for you..

 

[Fixin'Stuff]

Wired my last house with stuff from these guys: http://www.deepsurplus.com I had 24 drops total, tested them all using i-perf (network testing software) and never had a problem in the 8 years we lived there. Using the proper tools to strip http://www.deepsurplus.com/Network-...able-Stripper-for-Standard-UTP-Cable-Cat-5E-6 and punchdown http://www.deepsurplus.com/Network-...ith-Storage-Compartment-TL233A-With-110-Blade the wire makes the job pretty easy. Make certain to leave the pairs twisted together right up to the punchdown pins. Untwisting them, even a half-inch or so can create havoc with the signals at gigabit speeds.

 

[JimNC]

It sounds like your application requirements could be met easily by cat 5e for the foreseeable future, so I suggest that you terminate to quality cat 5e jacks, as @23ford suggested, as it is far easier than properly terminating cat 6.

 

[dfiler2]

Just curious, is hard wiring those items better than the wireless versions?

 

[kTHREE]

Just curious, is hard wiring those items better than the wireless versions?

There is not a single wireless interface that can match the reliability and speed of a hardwired connection. Minus the physical wire connection, there is no advantage to using wireless.

 

[klassenl]

There is not a single wireless interface that can match the reliability and speed of a hardwired connection. Minus the physical wire connection, there is no advantage to using wireless.

This

 

[JimNC]

Wireless is cheaper, provides mobility, and facilitates easier rearrangement. It is however less secure, maybe slower (it is slower, but it may still be faster than your application requires so it won't matter), and is subject to more odd gremlins.

So wire it if the cost doesn't bother you and you don't often move stuff around.

 

[Grant Gunderson]

It sounds like your application requirements could be met easily by cat 5e for the foreseeable future, so I suggest that you terminate to quality cat 5e jacks, as @23ford suggested, as it is far easier than properly terminating cat 6.

I am a commercial photographer, so I am constantly moving large amounts of data around the house depending on where I am working. I also move data between multiple machines in the office depending on how many assistants I currently have working. I only anticipate those file sizes to grow, and I can see my kid putting more strain on the network as he grows, downloads more movies, etc. So I don't want to be redoing this all in a few years, when the difference becomes more obvious with larger data loads.

 

[Grant Gunderson]

Doing this for a living I say Krone or Levi they are outstanding brands and will stand up to any abuse or stuff that happens. As for the cheap a## stuff home depot or lowes sells do waste your time. Those house brands are cheap cheap brands that do not always test out with a true network tester and if they do they will fail in a short time.

Krone is a German brand that is guaranteed for up to 500 terminations and the pins are at an angle so they grip the wire tighter. A cat 5E Krone jack will actually test out better that most C6 jacks on the market. And they are available on eslay at reasonable prices
Warning buy a krone punch down also to terminate them the 568B way.

Their punch down tool has cut off scissors and a pick if youneed it.

If you run the wire maybe you can find someone to terminate them for you..

Thanks!

 

[PelicanPines]

I have a Cat 5 set of lines wrapping around a few places in my house. Awesome connection and they let me have "access point" wireless nodes in different locations.

By the way ... I have 5 cats too

 

[23ford]

Wireless vs wired......wireless is approx 20% slower and can be affected by other wireless applications and severe weather. (a lot of it is they are just cheap and do not want to pay the cost altho some people just cannot afford it)

Cat 5 will handle a lot of the applications out there, C6 is more expensive and is harder to terminate. Unless you are running mutiple auto cad sessions or sending high volume x-rays C5 should fill the bill.

Good cable and top of the line jacks on C5 will test out and run at C6 specs. If you want
the best run C8.

However how you run the cable and terminate WITH NETWORK TESTING OF THE CABLES is critical

As far as cost........
We screen all requests for home bids, people want a bid and when you spend 3 hours to inspect the property and prepare the bid then they want to beat you down or have the neighbor kid do it!

 

[JimNC]

If you want the best run C8

Where are we on interior fiber deployments? We do a bunch in commercial buildings, but as far as I know have none in residential other than in MDUs and even then the fiber isn't run to each unit.

 

[dfiler2]

There is not a single wireless interface that can match the reliability and speed of a hardwired connection. Minus the physical wire connection, there is no advantage to using wireless.

Thanks, good to know.

 

[Moto]

It sounds like your application requirements could be met easily by cat 5e for the foreseeable future, so I suggest that you terminate to quality cat 5e jacks, as @23ford suggested, as it is far easier than properly terminating cat 6.

I really do not understand this notion that cat 6 is more difficult to terminate than cat 5e.

Yes, you have to cut the spline, but I can't imagine anyone having trouble with that.

Yes, you need to do a good job if you want gigabit speeds, but that applies to 5e also. It is not hard to do a good job.

 

[Jawn]

I wired my house with Leviton CAT6 keystones and southwire CAT6 cable, using an Ideal impact punch tool. Very satisfied with this setup.

Put me in the boat of those wanting hardwired connection where possible/practical.

 

[ard]

I have a fiber drop by the couch- so I can render videos on the laptop while watching the news.

Overkill? I think not!

 

[ddawg16]

It sounds like your application requirements could be met easily by cat 5e for the foreseeable future, so I suggest that you terminate to quality cat 5e jacks, as @23ford suggested, as it is far easier than properly terminating cat 6.

Cat6 has 2 important advantages over Cat5. Heavier gauge wire and higher bandwidth.
Cat6 will support POE better than Cat5, and I find the heavier gauge wire actually makes it easier to wire a connector.

Just curious, is hard wiring those items better than the wireless versions?

If the device is not going to be moving from room to room....hardwire it.

There is not a single wireless interface that can match the reliability and speed of a hardwired connection. Minus the physical wire connection, there is no advantage to using wireless.

Yup

 

[23ford]

common miscoception heavier wire is not the fix all, it is the more twists per inch and seperation of the pairs for .igher speeds

 

[ddawg16]

common miscoception heavier wire is not the fix all, it is the more twists per inch and seperation of the pairs for .igher speeds

The heavier wire supports POE better.......less voltage drop.

 

[cheechi]

best is subjective. I like Monoprice. I think they are the best for the money.

I have added at least one cat6 and rg6 to every room in my house and the one spot I have an issue is the Lowes plate because I had a hole that a double gang plate needed to cover. So I got one with a 2x3 keystone retainer and the 'nylon brush' hole covers for cords going up to the tv. It's probably OnQ, really never was impressed by anything of theirs, their keystone blanks are way too bulky.

90% of the data I've done in my home is Monoprice cat6 cable, ends, keystones, patch panel, covers, you name it. I am an IT guy. I often wind up taking over projects people get in over their heads, and have used most of what you could get locally from the common places and I think they're all ****. A few of the ones from amazon, newegg, etc aren't bad.