Subject says it all. I"m going to run cat 6 for my data network in my reno. I'll probably have to buy a ton more than I will use so if I could also use it for telephone as well, it would be nice. To be clear, I'm not trying to use my ethernet for telephone, just the cable.

 

AFAIK you can use it just fine. You wouldn't pay the extra JUST for POTS, but if you have extra, no reason not to.

 

As GG said, Cat6 is better then you need for voice so it would work just fine.

 

Yeah I would never waste CAT6 on telephone unless it wasn't my dime. From my supplier CAT6 costs roughly double what CAT5e does per box. But that said, all you need for telephone is two wires per line. The phone doesn't care if it's CAT6 or lamp cord. Blue pair = line 1, orange pair = line 2, green pair = line 3, brown pair = line 4.

 

Well, I'm running data and just bought 500 ft. of cat 6. I won't need that much wire, so being able to use some up for phone line would be advantageous to me. Who knows if I will even need phones in these rooms anyway. I could always repurpose to phone ca6 line to a data if I needed to as well.

 

Do it all the time at work. Idea is that at some point phones to be replaced with VoIP sets. Big waste of money but it makes the suits happy.

 

Yeah Astuff that's what I was getting at when I said unless it isn't my dime.. If that's what the customer wants, I'm more than happy to install it and charge them accordingly.. But I wouldn't do it in my own castle, and I certainly wouldn't push it on a resi customer as having any type of advantage. There are no VoIP phones that require CAT6 anyway..

To be honest, there's not a whole lot of reason to install CAT6 in a house anyway, because there's very little that will use all that bandwidth. The only time it would be advantageous is if you have two machines in separate rooms that have to transfer large files between one another. HiDef streaming video between a server and STB/HTPC is only 10-15Mbps. 25Mbps if you store uncompressed BluRay rips.. Your computer's internet connection is only going to be 15-20Mbps.. Basically everything you use will run just fine at its fullest potential on CAT5e.

Personally I only have CAT6 running from one room to my server closet - because that room has the computer where I do all my rips, and then I send them to the file server. I also ran it from the closet to the fiber Demarc box, just on the offchance that I want to get 100Mbps service at some point. Everything else is CAT5e.

 

Why are you using cat6 in the first place? Cat5e is good for gigabit.

 

Ehhhh, CAT5e meets the MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS for Gigabit. I wouldn't say it's GOOD for Gigabit. Basically it'll work at a passable level under ideal conditions, but any outside influence (improper termination practices, tight radius bends, routing near EMI/RFI sources, etc) will drastically reduce throughput. The heavier wire gauge, tighter twist, and pair separation spline in CAT6 are meant to overcome this - so if you NEED Gigabit speeds, then you use CAT6. The vast majority of applications you'll find in a house are incapable of using Gigabit, and even if they do (such as a PS3), they do not utilize it for anything that a 100Mbps link couldn't handle.

As I said, the only thing that will benefit from CAT6 is if two computers in separate rooms need to transfer large files between each other. And then there is a point where even Gigabit takes a while.. This is where Sneakernet (physically taking a hard drive full of data from one computer to another) becomes more efficient.

 

I wanted to be able to setup a gigbit network. I currently have one item in my house that can handle gigbit connections, so I know it isn't something I need now. Seeing how data speeds are on the rise and I don't know what my future needs will be, I see no harm in installing cat6 for the future. I think saving the hassle of not fishing cables in the future is worth the $30 in additional cost.

 

Industry practice now is to put Cat6 in to new data installation and to use Cat5e if adding to an existing Cat5/5e installation. 10GBaseT likely can run over shorter lengths even if it won't work over the full 100m max length channel.

Have you decided what jacks you're going to use for the workspace end? As others said, if the customer goes to VOIP then having matched jacks becomes important, even if they're going to just stick an RJ-11 plug into an RJ-45 jack.