Running Ethernet in the House

[Grant H.]

Unless you're rich or don't have time at all, I strongly recommend DIY.

Get the best cable you can to future proof it. Think like Cat-7, foil wrapped with a ground wire. (SF-UTP or SF-STP) and get a grounded block - budget $80 or so, ($#$%ing brain fart, I know what it is called - ETA a second later, patch panel) to run them all into your cabinet. Then do short little patch cables to your router, etc. You can get the tool kits for cheap - under $40, and a huge pack of shielded RJ-45 connectors for under $20. A spool of 500 feet of cable could be had for probably $250.

If you had someone do that, you're looking at a $1,000+ job. There is truthfully no skill to it - just google the order of the wires, push them in the connector, crimp. A big problem is, whatever you quote, they are highly likely just to put Cat-5e in, who is going to know? (from their perspective) Or at the very least, cheap chinese cable that might say cat-7, or cat-6, etc, but really isn't.

ETA: The shielded increases your top speed when grounded, and also reduces risk of equipment damage from any kind of EMF event even if rare - runs of twisted pair make for huuuuuuge antennas otherwise.

Cat7 for a house is overkill. I get your want to "future proof" the cabling, but any good Cat6 will support gigabit and even beyond (I've run 10gb/s on cat6) when you are talking the distance for a regular house to a central point. If they are for sure going to 10gb/s, then sure, but their budget just went way the hell up.

As for grounding the shielding of the cable? Unless you are providing a true earth ground tie point at both ends of the cable run (extremely unlikely for a house... because the ground leg of the plug on your device doesn't count) you're still relying on the grounding/isolation equipment in the switch, router, or computer.

I promise I'm not trying to pick on you. I've done this kind of work all over the country for years, and there is a lot of misinformation in what you wrote.