Matt wrote:
As to Cat5e becoming obsolete?????? How many home users have Gigabit network cards, many large companies are not even at that standard, or if they are, they are hard coded to 100 full. Either way you cannot go wrong but I do agree with the conduits. i will look into that myself. Also, try getting an affordable Gigabit switch!!
Yes, many large offices will have cat5 or 5e in place. No, many of them will not have gigabit to the desktop. Reason being the cost to retrofit. But new installations and updates will usually use the latest standard, which will be 5e or 6.
It is more likely to get gigabit in a home where the number of computers in use will be much smaller, and most motherboards anre now coming with cheap RealTek/Marvel gigabit chipsets.
There are plenty of cheap gigabit switches out there. Dell being my personal favourite. 16 port rackmountable switches for about $280. I have about 10 of them here in my office and 1 at home for all my stuff.
Also there are several cheap networking cloners out there who are now marketing their own router/swtich bundles with gigabit ports for well under $200.