[vetinari]

It's not that simple everywhere, We have brick walls, replacing cables means lot of dust and repairing those opened walls... provided you don't damage anything already there.

So here I'm feeling adventurous for pushing 10 GbE over a run of Cat5E for the next decade or more.

[nvgeele]

True, although if you are lucky your cables run through cable ducts. My house was built in 1935 and has brick walls as well, but all cables run through plastic cable ducts embedded in the walls. Where I'm from this is very common, as virtually all housing has brick (or concrete) walls.