Saw cat7 patch panels at Fry's the other day.
Jeez! I haven't seen hardly any applications that require cat 6, now someone comes up with cat7...

Last flyer I saw had some Cat7 at Greybar for about $800 a box..

Why? If someone needs that much bandwidth then fiber would be the way to go.

For Pete's sake....hardly anyone uses Cat 6 around here to its potential...now we have cat 7?

Its like building a car to cruise at 250 mph. The question is WHY?

I don't believe that the Cat 7 standard has been officially released by the EIA/TIA. If it has, that's one thing, but if it hasn't then you could be spending significant $ on what could be the wrong cable. Promise your customer Cat 7 cable and then find out later it's really not!

The European standard, Class F is probably what Cat 7 will be, but who knows?

Merrritt, fiber IS the way to go if you need that muc bandwidth, but you're probably looking at Single Mode rathe then Multimode. As I recall they were having trouble going over 50 meters with MM on real high speeds. With SM, you're talking real big bucks for the switches and NICs.

Derrick, as far as why, I always felt it was because the IT weenies that ran the networks never managed them properly. We used to have an 80-20 rule dealing with data networks. These days , no one seems to know (or care) about it- they just throw bandwidth at the problem. Hence, Cat 7.

And with every email having to look like a ransom note, Lots of bandwidth is needed.

Just the $0.02 of an old retired telephone guy.

Sam