My dad’s moving into a new build house. Big place, thick walls, concrete floors. Fancy schmancy ground source heating, uber everything, CAT 7 cables throughout.

Problem is internet and phone. He’s got a DECT phone in his current house, which won’t cut it in the new house. WiFi would need 3 or 4 repeaters. So what interfaces would he need to run and access phone and internet through the CAT7 cabling? He might still have a 2 or three zones coming off it, office might just be wired to the PC. Phone would be in 5 rooms maybe.

I’m trying to help him finding out what he needs, but the thing I’m finding, as he has done, that when you’re trying to look up stuff about Cat6/7 cabling interfaces, you’re drowned in info about pros and cons of 5/5e/6/7 cabling, 4K video streaming, multimedia house interconnection, future of wired/wireless. Can’t seem to filter my searches enough to find much about the basics.

Can anyone help with hints? Search terms? Links? Guides?

Thanks loads!

Stop searching for Categories, it’s just network cable and should be terminated in the same way unless they’ve done something wacky with it (which is entirely possible as Cat7 isn’t a ratified standard).

I’d go with plugging it into existing stuff as Cougar says, chances of him having internet that beats Cat 5 are fairly slim along with I/O speeds on stuff that can keep up.

You can search like this:

Cat 7 cabling telephone -4k

Which will exclude any of the results with 4k, you can add as many of these as you want.

I think Cat7 is just more twisted than 6 and there are no differences with wiring them up. If you want Cat7 speeds then you will need a router/switch that is capable of supporting those speeds, but most appliances do not achieve anywhere near those speeds.

cheers guys. Will search with network cable and check which terminations he’s got.

mike, Cat7 is overkill for the 5-8Mbps available in the area, yes!

It’s certainly overkill for a plain old telephone. It seems odd to me that they’d wire in Cat7 cabling and not make any sort of provision for a telephone extension.

Incidentally, if you’re thinking of replacing five DECT phones with wired, you’re probably going to run into problems. Each wired phone will typically a have a REN value of 1, and you’ve got a maximum REN value of 4 on a domestic BT line.

Thanks cougar, I’ll have to do some more on the phone front.

So am I right in thinking that he can get Broadband from BT with their standard modem/wirelessrouter (or superhub, whatever), that will do for one zone downstairs, also plug the router into the network, buy wireless access points for other areas of the house?