CAT6/Network Installation Fredericksburg

[Jon_In_NOVA]

I used to be a hardcore PVP gamer, and I own a 5200 sq ft house in 20112. Never had a problem with dual band routers wireless N (soon AC) and corresponding wireless NICs. I used an Apple airport extreme and a fairly cheap netgear wireless N adaptor. My router is in my office; my PC is in the basement. This was with 5mb up/down Comcast using my own amazon cheapo cable modem.

Gaming was all based on West coast servers with under 100ms latency consistently.

I am trying to convince my wife's cousin (we are good friends) to ditch his plans to do the same. He has no need for internal file transfers or creating his own intranet. For home business continuity it may make sense however there are so many cheap and secure cloud services out there that have much higher availability regulations than your ISP will ever have.

edit: Now prewired speaker cabling or generic conduits where it makes sense; that is an investment I can get behind.

[Panu16]

I stream videos a lot through Vudu, Netflix, Hulu, Youtube and Twitch services. There is a lot of difference (to me) between streaming wirelessly and through hard-wired Ethernet. Ethernet is much more stable. My Xbox One and Roku are four feet away from the wireless access point. I use Ubiquiti Unifi LR for my WAP connected to the FIOS router (wifi is disabled on the FIOS router). I am getting ready to pull the trigger on a 4K TV soon and wouldn't even think of streaming 4K videos through wifi.

Cat6 is capable of 10 gbps network while Cat5e is only 1 gbps. There is no consumer grade equipment for 10 gig network yet. The cost difference between Cat6 and Cat5e wires is minimal. I would go with Cat6 and run conduits between the control room and important locations to future-proof the wirings.