Anonymous wrote:I have Cat6 everywhere. It is very far from being OBE. It also means I can plug in a WiFi extender into the wired Ethernet anywhere if needed.

We have 1/3 acre lots and there are something like 6 other houses' WiFi contending with our WiFi (which we use only for iPhones/iPads). There are no unused Wifi channels anywhere in our neighborhood - and again these are not tiny lots or such like. It would be worse in a denser area.

Same problem here. I switched to 5GHz to get away from everyone else a few years ago. However, it's getting crowded again.

For anything that doesn't move, I installed cat5e about a decade ago. Two drops per room and terminated into a punchdown in my crawlspace. There's a biggish (16 ports?) unmanaged switch connecting it all. Fiber is overkill inside the house for the relatively short distances involved. If you need more than two connections, the room gets a switch.

All my IoT devices are on a 2GHz WiFi to keep them from slowing down the 5GHz WiFi for the phones, tablets, and laptops. I did that a few years ago. That's was tedious. Does it matter? Not sure. There are a crazy number of IoT devices in my house. It was a good to audit them.

We use a low cost 8-port netgear switch. We have many more Cat-6 outlets and cables running to the basement. We connect outlets in use right now to the switch. If we move a TV into a different room then we switch which outlet connects to the switch.

Anonymous wrote:I’m looking at cat6 at my townhome from the late 80s what is there to know I would like it in all rooms except bathrooms.

You will have to run a separate cable to each room. All of those cables will have to meet someplace where you will need to put a switch. The switch will require enough ports for each cable. Depending on how many rooms you are planning to wire, this could be a lot of cable and a fairly large switch.

I ran cables for my TV, printer and a WIFI access point on each floor. That works for me.