If you're specifying cabling for a new Boise office, you'll hit this fork in the road: Cat6 or Cat6A. Cat6A is maybe 30% more expensive installed. Is it worth it? The short answer: for most new commercial builds in 2026, yes. Here's why.
Performance difference in plain English
Cat6 handles 1 Gbps all day and can do 10 Gbps only up to about 55 meters — and only in a clean, non-crowded bundle. Cat6A is rated for 10 Gbps at the full 100 meters and handles 2.5 / 5 / 10 Gbps PoE devices without the heat-dissipation issues Cat6 can have when you bundle a lot of high-PoE cables together.
When Cat6 is the right call
If you're a small office with a 5-year horizon before your next tenant improvement, running under 100 Mbps per user in daily work, and sticking to standard 1 Gbps switches and APs, Cat6 is fine and will save you money.
When Cat6A is worth it
New construction where you won't touch these cables for 10+ years. Wi-Fi 6E/7 access points that support 2.5 or 10 Gbps uplinks. Medical imaging or video production. Any run you think might ever carry 10 Gbps. Pulling twice is always more expensive than pulling once, so if there's any doubt, Cat6A pays for itself.
What we recommend in 2026
For any new-construction Boise or Meridian commercial build, we default to Cat6A. For a quick tenant-improvement refresh with a short horizon, Cat6 is fine. Mixed is also common — Cat6A to APs, Cat6 to desk drops.
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