CAT 5e - STP or UTP

[Rex..]

Do I need to go down the shielded route since I'm going to have wireless gadgets or is that a waste of time?

[DeeBee]

I have used standard Cat5 in my house for years alongside a wireless network - no problems with drop out or speed here

HTH

DeeBee

[Andrew Gabriel]

It can be worse than an waste of time/money. If you use shielded and don't correctly handle the shield, it acts as an antenna, making it worse than using unshielded.

Unshielded is fine -- there are office buildings full of both unshielded and wireless working together, without any problems.

[Rex..]

Thanks.. It'll make it so much cheaper :)

[Dave Liquorice]

erm, why do you need cable if you are going wireless?

But I guess you mean the umpteen other wireless gadgets that a home can have these days. None of which run a high enough power levels to require network cabling to be screened. Indeed you are more likely to have trouble with all the wireless gadgets all trying to use the same limited band allocations...

[gg1000]

The idea with UTP is that two identical wires running almost identical routes will be subject to near identical interference. If the two wires hold 0v and 5v yet become subject to interference that adds 7v to each then you get 7v and 12v. A properly designed modern system will simply look at the difference between the two (still 5v). This is not always done well, but it is one of the normal things checked when a system is designed (it's called common mode noise rejection). I have yet to find a device that performs so badly that it would have problems in anything but the most demanding location (such as an engine bay).