If your walls are open — new construction, a gut remodel, a basement finish — the most durable decision you can make for your network is also one of the cheapest: pull the right category of Ethernet cable through the studs before drywall goes up. Once the drywall closes, the answer you picked is the answer you have, essentially forever.
In 2026 the question is almost always Cat5e vs Cat6 vs Cat6A, with fiber on the edges for long runs. Here’s the honest version of how to choose, with no spec-sheet-speak.
The quick version
For a new build or remodel in Utah in 2026:
- Cat6: the default for every drop in the house — bedrooms, living rooms, desks, TV locations.
- Cat6A: for every access point drop, every camera drop, and the main trunk from the network closet out to other parts of the house.
- OS2 single-mode fiber: pulled alongside Cat6A for long runs to detached buildings — garages, shops, ADUs, guest houses, outbuildings.
- Cat5e: almost never, in 2026. Not worth the $60 you save per 1,000 feet.
The rest of this post is the reasoning behind that.
What each category actually does
Cat5e: the 2005 default, still technically fine
Cat5e is rated for 1 Gbps Ethernet at 100 meters. It’s still the most commonly installed cable in older homes, because it was the standard during a lot of early-2000s construction. On a modern home network running at 1 Gbps, it still works.
The problem isn’t what it does today, it’s what it can’t do tomorrow:
- Locked at 1 Gbps. No 2.5, 5, or 10 Gbps path.
- Thinner copper, worse PoE heat dissipation. Fine for phones and PoE cameras, marginal for Wi-Fi 7 APs that draw 25–30W.
- Looser twist rate, more susceptible to interference.
The only reason to pull Cat5e in new work is extreme budget pressure, and even then the math rarely works out — the cable itself is a small fraction of the labor cost.
Cat6: the 2026 baseline
Cat6 is the default we pull for everything that isn’t specifically an AP, camera, or trunk run. It’s rated for 1 Gbps at 100 meters and 10 Gbps at up to 55 meters (which covers almost every intra-home run).
Practical upsides over Cat5e:
- Thicker copper. Better PoE performance, less voltage drop on long runs.
- Tighter twist rate, better crosstalk rejection.
- 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps multi-gig Ethernet works reliably end- to-end — which matters when your ISP hands you 2 Gbps fiber, something that’s now routine in Salt Lake Valley and the Utah County growth corridor.
- Supports 10 Gbps on short runs, which is often all the 10 Gbps you’ll want inside the house.
Cost is modestly higher than Cat5e — roughly $150 per 1,000 feet CMR-rated, versus $90 for Cat5e. Against a $400/hour install crew pulling cables, the cable cost delta is noise.
Cat6A: the “future-proof” cable that’s actually worth it in specific places
Cat6A doubles Cat6’s frequency (500 MHz vs 250 MHz) and gives you 10 Gbps at the full 100 meters. It’s stiffer, thicker, harder to terminate, and more expensive — $300–400 per 1,000 feet, and compatible keystones and patch panels cost more too.
Where Cat6A earns its keep:
- Access point drops. Wi-Fi 7 APs routinely hit 2 Gbps+ wired throughput today, and tri-radio / 10 Gbps-uplink models are already shipping. A Cat6 AP drop is a bottleneck on a U7 Pro Max within a few years. We covered the AP standards question in our Wi-Fi 6E vs Wi-Fi 7 post.
- PoE+ and PoE++ heat dissipation. The current highest PoE tier (802.3bt Type 4, up to 90W) generates real heat in cable bundles. Cat6A dissipates that much better than Cat6, which matters for code compliance in bundled risers and attics.
- Main trunk runs. From the network closet to remote IDFs, from the rack to the AP switch, from the gateway to the 10 Gbps devices in your media room. 10 Gbps at 100 meters, period.
- Cameras at the edges of the house. When a camera run is 80+ meters and drawing PoE, Cat6A gives you margin that Cat6 doesn’t.
Shielded vs unshielded: usually not needed at home
Cat6 and Cat6A both come in shielded (F/UTP, S/FTP, STP) and unshielded (UTP) variants. Shielded cable is designed to survive environments with electromagnetic interference — datacenters, industrial floors, outdoor conduit runs near high-voltage gear.
In most homes, unshielded UTP is fine. Shielded cable is harder to pull, requires proper grounding at the patch panel (or it causes more problems than it solves), and costs more. The exceptions:
- Runs inside walls with heavy electrical conduit nearby.
- Outdoor conduit runs to detached buildings — we prefer outdoor-rated direct-burial Cat6A with a drain wire here, though fiber is usually the better answer.
- Industrial or commercial environments, which isn’t residential.
Pulling shielded cable “just in case” in a residential install usually trades real termination risk for a benefit you’ll never measure.
Plenum vs riser vs CM: pick the right rating
- CMP (plenum): rated to not contribute fuel in an air-handling space. Needed if the cable runs through a return-air plenum ceiling.
- CMR (riser): the residential default. Fine for in-wall and most attic runs. Burns, but slowly.
- CM (general): only for short jumpers and the bottom of the hierarchy. Never for in-wall.
- Direct-burial / outdoor-rated: for conduit runs to detached buildings. UV-, water-, and gel-filled in some cases. Never substitute indoor cable here.
Most commercial-grade homes in Utah don’t require plenum, but code varies. If your HVAC contractor designed for a return-air plenum, pull CMP and don’t argue about it.
When fiber is actually the right answer
Ethernet tops out at 100 meters. Long before you get there, a few things start pushing you toward fiber:
- Runs over 100 meters. Main house to a detached garage, shop, or ADU on a larger lot in Herriman, Highland, Heber, or Kamas. Single-mode fiber (OS2) doesn’t care about distance.
- Crossing between buildings. Fiber is galvanically isolated. Copper isn’t, which means a lightning hit on one building can send a surge down the Ethernet into the other. In a state that actually gets summer thunderstorms, this matters.
- Multi-gig trunk to a main switch. 25 Gbps fiber SFP28 modules are now affordable enough to consider in high-end residential installs where the backbone needs to outlive the Ethernet era.
For a typical 1-acre lot with a detached garage or shop, we’ll often pull OS2 duplex fiber alongside Cat6A, in the same conduit, to the far building. It’s cheap, and it gives future-you both options.
How many drops per room, and where
This is the other big pre-wire decision, and it’s the one homeowners regret most. Our default:
- Two drops behind every TV. One for the TV itself, one spare.
- Two drops at each desk / office location. PC + secondary device or dock.
- One drop per bedroom, at desk height, even if you don’t plan to use it. If your kids become gamers, you’ll thank yourself.
- AP drops at the ceiling — one per 1,200–1,500 sq ft, give or take layout. Cat6A, planned for coverage, not outlets.
- Camera drops at every eave, door, garage, and driveway-view location you can reasonably imagine wanting a camera.
- Kitchen drop behind the fridge. Internet-connected appliances are here. Don’t put them on Wi-Fi if you can help it.
- Doorbell pre-wire. Low-voltage doorbell wiring plus a Cat6 at the same spot, so any smart-doorbell is an option.
Copper is one of the cheapest parts of the build. Labor to open drywall later is the single most expensive post-construction mistake. We have literally never heard a client say “I pulled too much Cat6 when we built.” We hear the opposite constantly.
Termination and testing — the part that matters as much as the cable
A badly terminated Cat6A run underperforms a cleanly terminated Cat5e. Termination and testing are where amateur installs fall apart.
What we do on every install, and what you should ask for regardless of installer:
- Every run terminated to a keystone (not a crimp-on RJ45), landed in a patch panel at the network closet.
- Every run tested with a calibrated cable certifier (Fluke-class), not a cheap continuity tester. You want actual PASS/FAIL against the cable spec — attenuation, NEXT, return loss, wire map.
- Every run labeled on both ends. Room + outlet. Documented in a rack diagram you keep.
What this lets you do later
The whole point of cabling decisions is not what they do today — it’s what they let you do in five, ten, fifteen years without opening a wall.
A house that’s properly wired with Cat6A backbone and Cat6 drops can absorb every reasonable change over the next decade: Wi-Fi 8 APs, 10 Gbps desktop NICs, multi-gig ISP upgrades, PoE-powered displays and lighting, a proper VLAN-segmented network, more cameras, more APs as the house fills up. None of those become “we need to rip walls open” jobs.
Bottom line
Cat6 everywhere, Cat6A for APs and trunks, fiber for long runs and between buildings. Pull more drops than you think you need. Terminate and test every run. The incremental cost over Cat5e in 2026 is negligible compared to the cost of getting it wrong in a house that’s about to be closed up for twenty-plus years.
Keystone Integration handles structured cabling and pre-wire planning across Lehi, Saratoga Springs, Herriman, and the rest of the Wasatch Front. We design the cable plan, pull the runs, terminate to spec, and document what we put in your walls. You can see the full list of what we do on our main site, or get in touch to scope the cabling before your walls close.