My house is less than 10 years old. The standard builders package included a cat5 run to every room, but I paid extra for them to do cat6 instead.

After upgrading my internet service a year or so ago, I had been experiencing random disconnects and link speed slowdowns to my desktop PC in my basement office area.

Today I traced all the wires in the house. The electrician installed cat6 everywhere, except two runs were cat5. Guess where one of them was?

What's especially maddening is that I can see from the unfinished portion of the basement that this cat5 was pulled with a cat6 alongside it, which goes to the outlet directly above it on the main floor. An outlet I never use, as that room is dedicated to piano things.

Oh, and the best part is that all of these cables are stapled to the joists / studs as though they were Romex. So rather than pull through a replacement myself, I might have to hire a pro to do it. 🤬

@voltronic
Staples on the Cat5 and Cat6? Ouch! I've seen Romex shorted because of sloppy stapling.

@voltronic

If the jacket isn't pinched it may be fine. Actually the staple on Romex did not quite short the wire. It weakened the insulation and waited for a surge to punch through creating a very narrow spark gap. After that it would trip the breaker but still read good with a general purpose ohm-meter.

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@Sr0bi
I have a Klein cable tester with remote on the way, and my buddy is going to help me get Wireguard set up to do throughput testing to different outlets.

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