In reply to a post by jez9999:

These ones are likely to be stud walls filled with insulation so you can't just drop a wire down through them.

I would have thought that unusual in 90s when stud partitions were the common for non-structural partitions. More recent timber framed construction uses structural insulation panels for both external walls and internal partitions.

You might come across Paramount partitions which are double sheets of plasterboard filled with an eggcrate structure of thin cardboard. It's fairly easy to knock through the eggcrate fill from above to a limited distance, after drilling the ceiling plate, but otherwise you would need to cut out the plasterboard and either fill the void created or insert noggins either side of the cable run before a making good the plasterboard.

Yeah Cat6 I find very annoying.

Basically me in a rented home, and being lazy, meant I just ran cables across the floor between my living room and bedroom.

So originally the setup was phone socket in living room, Computer equipment and main switch in bedroom, and a second switch in living room, which was not next to the phone socket.

I got two long Cat5e cables, and two long Cat6 cables.

One Cat5e, goes between my two switches. I had a Cat6 going from main switch to the VDSL modem. This meant I had two cables in the hallway on the floor, I put mat over the bit where it crosses the floor, so it was at least only visible on the side. The cables going through side of doorway, but didnt prevent closing doors.

Also a Cat5e was connected between second switch and modem, but mostly not used. This since in the same room just went across edge of floor under window between the two devices.

Ironically I am using the other long Cat6 between my main PC and main switch, the actual distance between them is not even 5m, although the way the cable is routed might be 5m. This cable is mostly still rolled up with only the two ends fed to each device.

After I moved to VM cable from VDSL, I used the VM socket in my bedroom, so this allowed me to remove one of the cables in the hallway, when I got CityFibre installed, I chose to have the ONT in my bedroom, and also close to my main switch, so I still have just one cable between the two rooms and also can use a standard short Cat5e between ONT and firewall appliance.

I agree with the point that gigabit will be totally adequate for the majority of households for years to come. My own network has 2.5gig link between ONT and firewall, and 2.5gig link between firewall and main switch, but all other cabled links are gigabit. Even though my PC has a onboard 2.5gig, it is connected to a gigabit port on switch.

I being a geek myself have of course thought upgrading my LAN, but I just dont see the value, I feel like devices with multiple 2.5 gig ports, especially at least 4 and OpenWRT compatible are just not priced at consumer level of pricing, I do understand some people will spend a few hundred quid on networking kit like its nothing, but I am price sensitive on networking kit. I dont do much network transfer of data across my LAN, and when I do it I am ok with the performance. In terms of internet I am happy with the fact that my LAN is a lower capacity than my WAN, preventing any one device saturating the internet connection.

However if I was wiring ethernet around the home such as under floor and through walls, I think future proofing would win out, and I probably would use Cat6, its one thing to be lazy when just doing it across the floor, but wiring up under floor boards and through walls is the sort of thing you only want to do once and then just forget about it. Probably could use clips or something to keep the cable behaving and remove Cat6 stubbornness.

Cat5e is so flexible and easy to use - and smaller diameter. Cat6/6a is always so rigid, the only advantage is when going in a floor or ceiling void, you can normally straighten it out and then push into the void, aiming for the exit point and it will appear!

I do have some Cat6 and like you I find it annoying in a lot of cases.