behind wall cat6 runs, plenum or riser rated?

[MLMIB]

I know this has probably been asked a million times, but I can't seem to find a solid answer via search..

I'm running cat6 or cat6a in my house since the wireless sucks and I have fios. it'll all be behind the drywall. From what I have read plenum is for if it is in an open air area to protect against noxious fumes in a fire. So... does code call for plenum to be run behind drywall or does riser rated cat6a meet all the specs?

I wouldn't mind much if the difference for a 1000 foot spool of cat6a (as much as I think I might need for all the runs) wasn't 170 vs 500 on deepsurplus

thoughts?

thanks

[DaveHCYJ]

You do NOT need plenum or riser rated for in wall home use, unless for some silly reason you are running the cables inside one of your air conditioning ducts.

You most likely DO need some sort of CL2, CL3, CM, etc. rating to meet your local/state/whatever fire codes. These ratings basically mean the cable will burn slowly so as not to quickly transfer fire throughout your house.


Edit:
CMP (plenum) or CMR (riser) both meet the regular CM (in wall) rating, so you can use either plenum or riser if you want, but you can probably save some $ getting plain CM.

Edit 2:
depending on the length of your runs and if your planning on future proofing for 10Gig Ethernet you may want to consider regular Cat6 instead of Cat6a. Cat6 over at monoprice is only $86 for 1000ft saving you more than 50%

[MLMIB]

they are standard home runs in a 2 story house, I'm hoping it won't be more then 50 feet per home run. I thought though that cat6a was rated for 10Gig while cat6 was just 1gb. Is there some catch?

[DaveHCYJ]

Well the specifications are for the max cable length of 100 meters.

Its sort of like how Cat5e can do 1gig ethernet, but you need Cat6 to garentee 1gig if your cable runs are long enough.

Cat6 can do 10gig, but you need Cat6a for the max specification length of 100 meters.

At 50 feet is sounds like you are fine to use just Cat6. From wikipedia:
When used for 10GBASE-T, Cat.-6 cable's maximum length is 55 meters (180 ft) in a favourable alien crosstalk environment, but only 37 meters (121 ft) in a hostile alien crosstalk environment such as when many cables are bundled together. 10GBASE-T runs of up to 100 meters (330 ft) are permissible using Cat.-6a.

Also, I think I read somewhere that if you are doing vertical runs (i.e. from one story to the next) rather than horizontal runs you need riser rated cable. It would probably be best to check you local building codes. God forbid your house burn down and your insurance claim get denied because of something not being to code.

[DaveHCYJ]

Here are some videos I found from back when I ran some wire in my house:
http://www.l-com.com/multimedia/video_clips/video.aspx?ID=13100

You can see the progression from the unrated cable which bursts in to flames and you can imagine it quickly speading fire from room to room in your house inside the walls, to the general rated cable which burns a bit slower, to the riser rated which self extinguishes, to the plenum rated which does little more than smoke and disintigrate.