Definately look at putting in place at least the cabling in larger installations where labour and cable costs exceed that of the system itself. We have deployed many twisted pair solutions as it is inevidable, everything is going down the IP route.
Our cabling is 10GBASE-T ready, which is capable of 10 gigabits per second. To achieve the usual 100 metres, the cable needs to be Cat-6a (augmented Cat6) which is designed to reduce crosstalk between UTP cables, known as alien crosstalk. This ensures the network can support 1000Base-T with options to change the switching gear to 10GBase-T later on.
As for baluns, they're as good as what you pay for, go the cheap and nasty and expect cheap and nasty. I use NVT, they work up to 250m (50m short of Coax) if you need longer runs, they have active recievers that will transmit easily over 1 Kilometer. Again, shop around, but beware of cheap makes. I learned the hard way.
As for pushing IP, they are coming down in price and a lot of the manufacturers are moving to IP.
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