If you are having network cabling installed at home, someone has probably asked whether you want Cat6 or Cat6a, and the honest answer depends on your cable run lengths, your internet plans and your budget. The good news is that for most homes the decision is simpler than the spec sheets suggest. Here is how we advise customers across Edinburgh, the Lothians and the North of England.
Both cables carry gigabit internet without breaking a sweat. The difference shows up at 10 gigabit speeds. Cat6 will run 10Gbps, but only reliably up to about 55 metres, and often less if several cables are bundled tightly together. Cat6a is rated for 10Gbps over the full 100 metres, because it operates at 500MHz rather than 250MHz and is built to resist interference between neighbouring cables, known as alien crosstalk.
In a typical three or four bedroom house, almost no cable run exceeds 30 to 40 metres from a central point to the furthest room. That means Cat6 will usually handle 10Gbps in a domestic setting anyway. The 55 metre limit matters far more in offices, schools and larger commercial buildings than it does in a semi in Musselburgh or a terrace in Newcastle.
For most homeowners, Cat6 is the right answer. It comfortably supports full fibre broadband, including the 1Gbps and 2Gbps packages now available across much of Edinburgh and the North East, plus 4K streaming, gaming and home working all at once. It is also thinner and more flexible than Cat6a, which genuinely matters when you are fishing cable through the lath and plaster walls of a Victorian tenement or the tight voids of a 1930s bungalow.
Cat6 also terminates more easily, so sockets and patch panels tend to be tidier and faults are rarer. If your runs are under 50 metres and you are cabling for Wi-Fi access points, TVs, a home office and perhaps a couple of PoE cameras, Cat6 will not be the bottleneck for many years.
Cat6a makes sense in a few specific situations. If you are building or fully renovating and the walls are open, the extra cost of Cat6a is modest against the total job, and it future proofs the property for decades. Large houses, steadings and farm conversions where runs to outbuildings can push past 55 metres are another clear case, and we see plenty of those in the Borders and rural Northumberland.
It is also worth considering if you run a serious home office or studio, move very large files between machines, or plan a NAS setup where 10Gbps between rooms is genuinely useful today rather than someday. Cat6a handles heat from high power PoE devices slightly better too, which helps if you are powering several cameras or access points from one cabinet.
Cat6a cable typically costs 30 to 50 percent more per metre than Cat6, and the connectors and keystone jacks are pricier as well. Because it is thicker and stiffer, installation takes longer, especially in finished properties where every bend and drilled hole is harder work. As a rough guide, a Cat6a job might come in 20 to 40 percent above the same job in Cat6, though it depends heavily on the property, access and the number of points.
Our honest advice is to spend the difference on more Cat6 points rather than fewer Cat6a ones, unless you fall into one of the cases above. Two well placed sockets in every room beats one premium socket, because you cannot easily add cable later but you can always upgrade the kit at each end.
No. Cat6 supports multi-gigabit speeds over typical domestic distances, and UK broadband is nowhere near saturating it. A Cat6 installation done properly should serve a home for 15 to 20 years.
Usually not. Unshielded Cat6 is fine for almost all homes. Shielding is worth discussing only if cables must run close to mains circuits, older fluorescent fittings or industrial equipment, which is rare domestically.
Yes, and it is often sensible. Some customers run Cat6a on the longest routes, such as to a garden office or outbuilding, and Cat6 everywhere else. The network simply runs each link at the best speed that cable supports.
Send Scott the details and we'll get a realistic price back to you, usually the same working day.
Tell us about the job. A photo of the cabinet or a rough cable count is plenty to get a price started.