Stick with a Cat5 or Cat5e cable for your home. Cheaper and you won't notice anything different than a Cat6 unless you have some seriously high speeds or need to route the cable longer than around 75 ft
As for a wireless route; I used to use linksys as they had VERY HIGH quality routers back in ye olde days of 2000-2004 but I've lost a lot of faith in them the past few years. I refuse to use a D-link as they well... they stink from my experience. Belkin is super over priced.
I had a Netgear but that broke almost immediately out of the box. The replacement had random firmware on it which I had to flash.. that failed after 14 months and constantly dropped signal like the first one which failed. I've settled on the brand "TrendNet"
I've found their firmware to be very easy to update.. plus be rock solid. No drops...and after nearly 2 years i've only had to reset the router once (due to a sudden power flicker which knocked out the router but not the cable modem).
http://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-300Mbps-W...s+router+n
A Trendnet TEW-731BR btw ignore some of those amazon reviews... as someone who was a top 300 reviewer for Amazon some people seriously have NO CLUE what they are doing or what they are talking about. Funny thing is at Newegg a ton of people complain about slow speeds after a few days of constant use... odd.. they said the same thing about my Trendnet wired router.. uptime so far w/o reset.. 76 days since last reset and i'm still getting 18.8 Mbps by 4.6 Mbps (20/5 is my ideal speeds)
Do keep in mind this is a "cheap" 300 Mbit/s N wireless router ..
http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-E1200-Linksy...s+n+router
another decent N class router this one by Linksys; a tad pricey for what you get though. I am not a network specialist though.. I majored in Telecommunications (Cell phones specifically) where as my roommate and best friend did Computer Engineering and Wireless signal transmissions so he's the networking guru.
Edit
hehe.. just looked at my review page. x.x shocked after over a year of inactivity i'm nearly in the top 1000 still + have a 90% helpful rating . *stumbles across duke nukem forever review and Dungeon Siege 3* ....... I was way to nice with those reviews..... I'd post my profile but then you'd all know my full name!
As for a wireless route; I used to use linksys as they had VERY HIGH quality routers back in ye olde days of 2000-2004 but I've lost a lot of faith in them the past few years. I refuse to use a D-link as they well... they stink from my experience. Belkin is super over priced.
I had a Netgear but that broke almost immediately out of the box. The replacement had random firmware on it which I had to flash.. that failed after 14 months and constantly dropped signal like the first one which failed. I've settled on the brand "TrendNet"
I've found their firmware to be very easy to update.. plus be rock solid. No drops...and after nearly 2 years i've only had to reset the router once (due to a sudden power flicker which knocked out the router but not the cable modem).
http://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-300Mbps-W...s+router+n
A Trendnet TEW-731BR btw ignore some of those amazon reviews... as someone who was a top 300 reviewer for Amazon some people seriously have NO CLUE what they are doing or what they are talking about. Funny thing is at Newegg a ton of people complain about slow speeds after a few days of constant use... odd.. they said the same thing about my Trendnet wired router.. uptime so far w/o reset.. 76 days since last reset and i'm still getting 18.8 Mbps by 4.6 Mbps (20/5 is my ideal speeds)
Do keep in mind this is a "cheap" 300 Mbit/s N wireless router ..
http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-E1200-Linksy...s+n+router
another decent N class router this one by Linksys; a tad pricey for what you get though. I am not a network specialist though.. I majored in Telecommunications (Cell phones specifically) where as my roommate and best friend did Computer Engineering and Wireless signal transmissions so he's the networking guru.
Edit
hehe.. just looked at my review page. x.x shocked after over a year of inactivity i'm nearly in the top 1000 still + have a 90% helpful rating . *stumbles across duke nukem forever review and Dungeon Siege 3* ....... I was way to nice with those reviews..... I'd post my profile but then you'd all know my full name!
 Archer(Lv. 1)