I'd go with Cat 6, it's not that much more expensive. But Cat 5E would probably work quite adequately.

I guess it's the old "quality" question in a slightly different form.

Rob

I can recall the frustration of cabling a 5 bedroom Victorian house on 3 stories back in my S London days – and trying to keep it neat. Wife and I had separate office rooms and catered for the kids and family areas and we had some huge business files to upload. But as soon as reasonable wireless systems became available, the lot got ripped out when redecorating. It was different at my clinic with a dozen permanently located work stations, but even then some of the later additions were wireless links directly to the digital imaging systems to reduce router traffic.
Here the incoming speed is a few megabits and I see no point in bothering making any additions more complicated than powerline adapters until that changes and I become a YouTube influencer with live feeds (fat chance). I did run 60 or 70 yards of exterior quality cable up the side of the house to the gable end and attached to an overhead wire to my hobby shed. Much like the redecoration I wish I hadn't bothered because what was a small sapling is now a huge tree en route that requires branching. I’ve got powerline adapters to the barn which is just as far and probably cheaper than the cable cost and gives wired and wireless access within the barn space..

pgk

Just make sure the new cable sqmm matches the old one or the cable will not punch down properly. Each successive punch down weakens the connector tension especially if the new cable is smaller than the old. This gets even worse if you can only get stranded cable or the insulation is a different thickness. Check the specs of both the cable and boxes for matching thoroughly.

Personally I would treat CAT5e as a minimum, there is hardly any cost difference between gigabit and 10/100 switches and 802.11ax routers are normally gigabit anyway. I'm wiring our bungalow with CAT6 as the cost premium compared to CAT5e copper was negligible, and with a rural broadband subsidy our fibre connection delivers 300mb at the lowest price tier – if I could afford it 900mb is available over the same hardware.

I'm not sure that the installation requirements for CAT6/6a are that onerous, after all, minimum bend radii apply to all cables, and unlike power cables, if you go below the minimum, the worst that would be likely is a drop in speed, not a fire. (Probably not anyway, 10GBASE-T or POE might get warm).

If you do choose to go CAT5e or below, you might want to consider CCA (Copper-Coated Aluminium) cable which is less than half the price of copper. It is cheap enough to make it worthwhile doubling up on cable connections rather than using additional switches to get an extra connection in a remote location.

Brian G

Edited By Brian G on 04/09/2021 12:36:53

Edited again as I forgot to insert the link to Kenable for CCA cable.

Edited By Brian G on 04/09/2021 12:38:41

I am guessing that you are altering a hard wired Ethernet installation so unless you need to future proof the system then cable matched to your system is all that is required. Care in following the installation requirements is probably more useful than an over specified cable.

Mike