Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA
It looks like we may have to replace our phone lines in the house - we're getting consistent internet failures to connect that appear like they might be noise from the ancient phone lines under the house (going back to who knows when, probably 50 or more years old).

We have DSL for our computer. We're not power users. We are considering going to internet TV of some sort, which I think becomes a power-user kind of traffic, and our ISP can provide very high speed connections (don't ask me for numbers; I'm only but so smart on this stuff).

Home Desperate has Cat-5e and Cat-6 cables and fittings. Apparently, stuffing that last cat into the cables isn't easy (I don't even know how they get the first five cats in - the companies who make this cable must go through a lot of bandaids), because the fittings are four to five times more expensive. The fairly helpful Home Depot employee said that Cat-5e is adequate for today's residential settings, with Cat-6 being for high rises and other places like that. But he also implied that, ten years from now, Cat-6 may be necessary.

Anyone have more experience with this than the minimal amount I have?