Similarly to this question, I'm taking the opportunity, while a relative is remodelling part of their house, to wire that part for data.
I have done plenty of CAT5 and CAT6 cabling in the past. I could just install CAT6, but there are newer cabling standards, and it seems crazy to install such old-fashioned cable now, when it would be very hard to replace later.
I would be happy to install better cable, and terminate to CAT6 standards now (e.g. CAT6 wall ports and patch panel), knowing that it's not hard to replace the ends to get better performance in future (e.g. 10 Gbps or higher). I have no advanced tester, nor any ambition to meet CAT6a standards at this point; working Gigabit would be enough, as long as the cables are good and the network can be upgraded later by re-terminating it.
But it seems that CAT7, 7a and 8 are shielded. CAT6a maybe should not be shielded (see comments on that Q&A), but everything I found on Amazon is shielded.
It seems that shielded cables require shielded connectors, otherwise they will probably perform worse than unshielded cable. So I also need shielded plugs, patch panel and wall ports, and grounding? But maybe the final patch cables can be unshielded without breaking things? Shielded Ethernet cabling is completely new to me.
I could find only one small wall-mounted CAT6a patch panel on Amazon, and nothing higher than that. I'm dubious about the shielding on that one. I also found only one or two types of CAT6a wall ports. So it seems that CAT6a is difficult to achieve, and anything higher is almost impossible, and even if I try CAT6a I might get worse results than using CAT6.
I could even try installing factory-made CAT6a/CAT8 patch cables, avoiding terminating them myself, maybe using keystone couplers to turn the ends into sockets that one can attach a standard patch cable to, and put these into keystone wall plates, if there's space? But it seems like they would take a lot of space, and I don't have a good solution for the patch panel end. There are only about 8 cables, so I don't really want a large 24-way 19" rack mount patch panel.
Also, CAT6a cable is reasonably priced, but CAT8 is crazy expensive (5 times the price). And I also read that CAT7 and CAT7a should not be used.
Unfortunately the house is occupied and the cables will be chased into walls, an electrician will install the cable (but not terminate it), and the project manager doesn't want to install conduit so that I can pull fibre or different cable later. So we'll be stuck with whatever I choose now for 10-20 years. The timeline is really tight as the PM didn't contact me or send plans until yesterday, and now needs the cable ASAP, so I have about 12 hours to order it.
So how can I reasonably wire a house for data now, knowing that the cables are future-proof for 10+ years? Can I really do no better than CAT6 cable? Or can I install CAT6a+ cable and ground it at the shielded patch panel to get gigabit speeds for now?
This question looks relevant but the only answer says "you can't mix shielded and unshielded" which I'm not sure about (I just want to avoid getting worse performance than UTP), and it's also downvoted.
