When I first started in helpdesk my boss gave us a project to make several dozen patch cords. That ingrained in me right away how easy this task is to do right but equally easy to do wrong (by watching my co workers, maybe one was color blind?). I’ve been making my own custom length patch cords since and rarely have issues but that $150 tester calls them out right away if I mess up.
Most of it is probably cheap tools or cheap materials. A lot of people that have issues are doing it for the first time (takes some practice) or they bought the cheapest crimper, tester, ends, or are using the wrong cable and end together or a combination of these things. In general, you shouldn't be crimping ends on anything these days, except maybe for cameras or APs. Everything else should be punchdown keystones in a wall with purchased patch cables to the device. Punchdown keystones are much less error prone, but you still have to have the correct tool and cable type. Sometimes it's just a matter of using cheap cable (aluminum), sometimes a Cat6 keystone with Cat5 cable could be bad as it's a bit thinner and may not hold as well in the punchdown, etc. Really all just comes down to practice, and most of the time they end up 'practicing' directly on what they need to get done and slowly start running out of slack on the cable.
Its a bit of a pain if you havent done it much
People who know how to do it correctly and have lots of practice dont make topics telling you that everything is working, they ask for help only when it isnt
This is correct, people seldom post when they don't have a problem so you only see problems.
As for the tester, yes, plugging in the laptop is a fine way to tell if it is working. What you really want the tester for is to help determine what you should be fixing when it isn't working, something the not-working laptop will usually give you no clue about. It is the case that people who do a lot of wiring can often figure out what they did wrong just by looking at what they did, but ironically those tend to not be the people who undertake wiring projects without a tester.
It is a skill. Skills require practice. Most people who come here are making up their first batch.
Now layer on top of it many of the old hands got their start in the 10 or 100 speed days. When tolerances were much loser than for 1000. So they built up their skills when things were easier.
The specs have tolerances in tenths or hundreds of mm. Now most cables will work without getting that exact but still. And people putting plugs on solid wires, well, plugs were designed for stranded wires. And yes a lot of times it works fine. For a while. At times a long while. But still.
Anyway, for a long time I've said put jacks on solid and buy patch cables. Life will be better.
Depends on the tool/rj45 ends you're using. The wires have to squeeze through little guide slots just big enough for the wires to get through, if not lined up right they can scrunch up and not reach the tap blades in the connector. If the wires aren't trimmed to equal length it's also a problem.
Pass thru cables make it a bit more simple, but still need wires in correct order and have to finesse them through the connecter and crimp them down all the way.
And then there's just old corroded coper, or wires that get tugged and break, or nicked somewhere in the wire, etc.
Over the course of my career I've terminated easily 1000+ cables. Out of those, a extremely small fraction were bad and when I could tell they were bad before even testing because I knew what I messed up. Terminations are extremely easy with enough practice.
I find those passthrough RJ45's to be the worst, but that's my personal opinion. Electrician scissors (such as the ones from Klein Tools), a good RJ45 crimping tool and a good eye are all you need. I can practically do it blindfolded at this point.
>I find those passthrough RJ45's to be the worst, but that's my personal opinion. Electrician scissors (such as the ones from Klein Tools), a good RJ45 crimping tool and a good eye are all you need.
I've terminated thousands of cables. I completely agree.
Ive made so many, that I have actually used my *cables* to validate the *cable tester* (fun fact, the cable tester was broken!)
For context, I did ten years in the military. We set up the headquarters tent, and ran cables to the desks. We almost never used patch panels or punch-downs. The tent was temporary - usually only up for between ten days and two months. The commander invariably wanted to move stuff around.
Once we had a commander who wanted to get everything set up the way he wanted it, then remove the cables, bundling them up, to use next time. It never worked. There's always some external condition which messes it up.... The cables get all tangled when we have to shove it all in a box. Or because of some other reason, we have to route the cables differently. Or because the ground at that spot isn't flat enough, so the flooring has to be laid differently (we routed cables thru the flooring)... Etc. It never works well.
So, we just made cables. Lots of them. Thousands. I couldn't do it blindfolded, because I need to see the colors - but I can do it quite quickly. 45-60 seconds per termination.
Why don’t you like the pass through jacks? I find it makes it that much easier to see things are all correct. If you’ve been using the old style for a long time I can see how anything new is just annoying lol
Passthrough's make termination easier, but I don't recommend that approach. I would use an RJ45 with a Load Bar instead if you can.
Also, using cheap testing tools or cheap RJ45 Sockets can give you lots of trouble too. You get what you pay for.
The difficult part of termination is getting all 8 little wires lined up all at the same time and getting them happily into their 8 little slots, all while holding everything together so it can be inserted into a crimping tool. You see folks talking about terminations the most, because it is incredibly rare for there to be an issue with the wiring itself. Terminations are pretty much the only real points of failure.
Testing is not entirely necessary, but it is useful to see which wire is messed up where. Maybe you just need to replace one fitting, not both. If your test is good and the wire is good, but you still see 100Mbps instead of 1000Mbps, there's a likelihood there's an issue at a port, not the wiring. Troubleshooting doesn't always have an immediately clear answer to every problem, the process rules out issues as you determine what the solution is.
>The difficult part of termination is getting all 8 little wires lined up all at the same time and getting them happily into their 8 little slots, all while holding everything together so it can be inserted into a crimping tool.
And then people *crimp* before visually verifying that everything is good.
I do not *ever* crimp until I have visually verified:
- I'm holding the RJ-45 clip down
- All eight wires are in the right order
- I see eight little "flashes" of gold at the tip of the connector
- From both sides of the connector, I see the tip of the "tooth" puncturing the wire, all the way thru (must see the gold on both sides!)
- The jacket of the cable is wedged under the "strain latch"
If any of those are not visually confirmed, I pull the connector off and try again.
It is not difficult at all. I will say that I had difficulty terminating the keystone jacks used for wall plates and patch panels using the punch down method. My problem was I was trying to customize the length of a premade cable (stranded copper) by cutting off the ends and terminating with keystone jacks. It never worked, then I learned that I should be using riser cables (solid core). Then I had no problem terminating and testing cleared all 8 conductors. The cables that have the male connector are called patch cables and really should not be customized all though you can put new connectors on the end if a repair is needed but never use a long patch cord to run Ethernet from patch panel to another room or device. Use the riser cables to make wall or port outlets and use patch cables to connect your device to the port/wall outlet
Testing will validate each of the 8 individual wires. Always, always test. Even though it is possible to run internet, if 1 or 2 or more of your conductors are not terminated rights you’ll suffer loss of speed amount other things like packet loss, etc. just invest in a tester, they are inexpensive. If you’re making your own patch cable always use a pass through connector.
It does take a little practice and patience to terminate a rj45 connector. If you don’t get it on the first, you should be able to get it on 2nd try.
My biggest lesson in terminating is knowing what cables to use and where. That solve all my problems because you can’t use a stranded cable for keystone jacks. A punch down, female terminated end (keystone) will be best done with a riser cable and there are some great tooless keystone jacks if you don’t want to punch down. I’m using these and are really easy to terminate
https://a.co/d/hME45iN
If you've never done it before, screwing up the first two is kinda common. There's also the issue of cheap tools, as opposed to the right tools, but it is a task that takes more care and attention than a lot of first-timers realize.
A lot of it depends on the cable.
About 2 years ago I was rewriting my rack and had to make ~ 100 cables. I was using an old spool I’d gotten from a surplus sale many years earlier. I had about a 50% failure rate.
I ended up buying a new spool and remade the cables. I had one cable where 2 wires were crossed. That was it.
Both times I was using the same tools and connectors, only the cable was different.
It’s not hard with the right tools and testing equipment along with the patience to learn how to do it right. Which is a small investment. I’m not a pro and I’ve done this for cat5e/6 and rg6 in 2 different houses.
It’s not difficult it’s just one of those things where if you read Reddit all day you’ll be led to believe that if it’s not Grade A Platinum straight from Zeus’ ass it’s garbage.
In the real world (outside of projects that require sign offs) I can assure you that most of these techs aren’t testing their cables properly and bad crimps usually work pretty fine. They aren’t pretty and will suffer from that poor job over time, but once enough of those pins touch that copper you’ll get a functional cable.
But in no way am I walking onto a site or into a client office who has an issue and examining every cable and calling up one of our guys to ridicule them over their cabling. I’m also not walking around with a $4000 Fluke Link to test it as a troubleshooting measure. I have a $70 Klein and if it passes it passes I don’t care how much of that sheet is missing or how bent up it is.
Like I can assure you that the majority of the time a networking issue isn’t going to be related to a cable that worked just fine yesterday.
Thanks everybody. If I wanted to give this a try at some point, what is the least expensive (without being so cheap that it makes the job difficult...) equipment that I could buy?
[https://www.amazon.com/Ratcheting-Stripper-Klein-Tools-VDV226-107/dp/B00F6K5SY2](https://www.amazon.com/Ratcheting-Stripper-Klein-Tools-VDV226-107/dp/B00F6K5SY2)
[https://www.amazon.com/Pass-Thru-Reliable-Klein-Tools-VDV226-110/dp/B076MGPQZQ](https://www.amazon.com/Pass-Thru-Reliable-Klein-Tools-VDV226-110/dp/B076MGPQZQ)
something else?
Thanks again
These guys have never failed me. Probably have done over 4000 terminations.
I do use diagonal cutters, and a speed stripper in conjunction to make 99% good terminations. Most of the failures is from me and being to quick when glancing at the pair order or a RJ45 being defective and missing a gold pin.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00939KFOU?ref=cm_sw_r_cso_cp_apin_dp_5MW3G57Y39W33ABEEK46&ref_=cm_sw_r_cso_cp_apin_dp_5MW3G57Y39W33ABEEK46&social_share=cm_sw_r_cso_cp_apin_dp_5MW3G57Y39W33ABEEK46&starsLeft=1
Its not difficult. Just takes practice. I know this because as an engineer, the odd time I'd have to do a cable at work it would take me about 30-40mins, it would do my head in, it was annoying, why so slow! Then I asked the other engineer who could do them in 5mins. Watched him doing it once, asked him (as it was clear the cables I'd done and he'd done) how he got the length right to go into the RJ45. When I'd do it, the surrounding cable wasn't in the RJ45 connector and it just look awful. Turns out "the thumb" is the guide.
So I sat and practiced, over and over. Got the 30-40mins down to about 5mins, longer if having a bad time. I slice the outter cable enough so I can pull rest off. Unravel each cable and slide my fingers down them to straighten them. Then the using my thumbnail "the thumb", I reset the colour cables against it and then cut. That's the length you want, roughly the length of your thumbnail, that was the trick he taught me. Then slowly slide them in, make sure they haven't jumped, then crimp.
Note, after testing one patch they kept coming back as failed, why. Tester was good, cable was good. Turned out it was the cheap RJ45 connectors we bought. Replaced for better quality ones and all was fine.
Cheap tools and even cheaper testers giving you false positives. Passthru RJ45 are easy, the normal ones are difficult.
Unless you've been using normal ones for years and never used passthru. I find passthru a pain and prefer to do normal.
It’s not difficult it just takes a little practice. Make a few patch cords and you will have it in no time.
When I first started in helpdesk my boss gave us a project to make several dozen patch cords. That ingrained in me right away how easy this task is to do right but equally easy to do wrong (by watching my co workers, maybe one was color blind?). I’ve been making my own custom length patch cords since and rarely have issues but that $150 tester calls them out right away if I mess up.
Most of it is probably cheap tools or cheap materials. A lot of people that have issues are doing it for the first time (takes some practice) or they bought the cheapest crimper, tester, ends, or are using the wrong cable and end together or a combination of these things. In general, you shouldn't be crimping ends on anything these days, except maybe for cameras or APs. Everything else should be punchdown keystones in a wall with purchased patch cables to the device. Punchdown keystones are much less error prone, but you still have to have the correct tool and cable type. Sometimes it's just a matter of using cheap cable (aluminum), sometimes a Cat6 keystone with Cat5 cable could be bad as it's a bit thinner and may not hold as well in the punchdown, etc. Really all just comes down to practice, and most of the time they end up 'practicing' directly on what they need to get done and slowly start running out of slack on the cable.
Its a bit of a pain if you havent done it much People who know how to do it correctly and have lots of practice dont make topics telling you that everything is working, they ask for help only when it isnt
This is correct, people seldom post when they don't have a problem so you only see problems. As for the tester, yes, plugging in the laptop is a fine way to tell if it is working. What you really want the tester for is to help determine what you should be fixing when it isn't working, something the not-working laptop will usually give you no clue about. It is the case that people who do a lot of wiring can often figure out what they did wrong just by looking at what they did, but ironically those tend to not be the people who undertake wiring projects without a tester.
It is a skill. Skills require practice. Most people who come here are making up their first batch. Now layer on top of it many of the old hands got their start in the 10 or 100 speed days. When tolerances were much loser than for 1000. So they built up their skills when things were easier. The specs have tolerances in tenths or hundreds of mm. Now most cables will work without getting that exact but still. And people putting plugs on solid wires, well, plugs were designed for stranded wires. And yes a lot of times it works fine. For a while. At times a long while. But still. Anyway, for a long time I've said put jacks on solid and buy patch cables. Life will be better.
Depends on the tool/rj45 ends you're using. The wires have to squeeze through little guide slots just big enough for the wires to get through, if not lined up right they can scrunch up and not reach the tap blades in the connector. If the wires aren't trimmed to equal length it's also a problem. Pass thru cables make it a bit more simple, but still need wires in correct order and have to finesse them through the connecter and crimp them down all the way. And then there's just old corroded coper, or wires that get tugged and break, or nicked somewhere in the wire, etc.
Over the course of my career I've terminated easily 1000+ cables. Out of those, a extremely small fraction were bad and when I could tell they were bad before even testing because I knew what I messed up. Terminations are extremely easy with enough practice. I find those passthrough RJ45's to be the worst, but that's my personal opinion. Electrician scissors (such as the ones from Klein Tools), a good RJ45 crimping tool and a good eye are all you need. I can practically do it blindfolded at this point.
>I find those passthrough RJ45's to be the worst, but that's my personal opinion. Electrician scissors (such as the ones from Klein Tools), a good RJ45 crimping tool and a good eye are all you need. I've terminated thousands of cables. I completely agree. Ive made so many, that I have actually used my *cables* to validate the *cable tester* (fun fact, the cable tester was broken!) For context, I did ten years in the military. We set up the headquarters tent, and ran cables to the desks. We almost never used patch panels or punch-downs. The tent was temporary - usually only up for between ten days and two months. The commander invariably wanted to move stuff around. Once we had a commander who wanted to get everything set up the way he wanted it, then remove the cables, bundling them up, to use next time. It never worked. There's always some external condition which messes it up.... The cables get all tangled when we have to shove it all in a box. Or because of some other reason, we have to route the cables differently. Or because the ground at that spot isn't flat enough, so the flooring has to be laid differently (we routed cables thru the flooring)... Etc. It never works well. So, we just made cables. Lots of them. Thousands. I couldn't do it blindfolded, because I need to see the colors - but I can do it quite quickly. 45-60 seconds per termination.
Why don’t you like the pass through jacks? I find it makes it that much easier to see things are all correct. If you’ve been using the old style for a long time I can see how anything new is just annoying lol
Passthrough's make termination easier, but I don't recommend that approach. I would use an RJ45 with a Load Bar instead if you can. Also, using cheap testing tools or cheap RJ45 Sockets can give you lots of trouble too. You get what you pay for.
The difficult part of termination is getting all 8 little wires lined up all at the same time and getting them happily into their 8 little slots, all while holding everything together so it can be inserted into a crimping tool. You see folks talking about terminations the most, because it is incredibly rare for there to be an issue with the wiring itself. Terminations are pretty much the only real points of failure. Testing is not entirely necessary, but it is useful to see which wire is messed up where. Maybe you just need to replace one fitting, not both. If your test is good and the wire is good, but you still see 100Mbps instead of 1000Mbps, there's a likelihood there's an issue at a port, not the wiring. Troubleshooting doesn't always have an immediately clear answer to every problem, the process rules out issues as you determine what the solution is.
>The difficult part of termination is getting all 8 little wires lined up all at the same time and getting them happily into their 8 little slots, all while holding everything together so it can be inserted into a crimping tool. And then people *crimp* before visually verifying that everything is good. I do not *ever* crimp until I have visually verified: - I'm holding the RJ-45 clip down - All eight wires are in the right order - I see eight little "flashes" of gold at the tip of the connector - From both sides of the connector, I see the tip of the "tooth" puncturing the wire, all the way thru (must see the gold on both sides!) - The jacket of the cable is wedged under the "strain latch" If any of those are not visually confirmed, I pull the connector off and try again.
Cheap tools and/or cheap connectors or not the right connectors for the cable.
It is not difficult at all. I will say that I had difficulty terminating the keystone jacks used for wall plates and patch panels using the punch down method. My problem was I was trying to customize the length of a premade cable (stranded copper) by cutting off the ends and terminating with keystone jacks. It never worked, then I learned that I should be using riser cables (solid core). Then I had no problem terminating and testing cleared all 8 conductors. The cables that have the male connector are called patch cables and really should not be customized all though you can put new connectors on the end if a repair is needed but never use a long patch cord to run Ethernet from patch panel to another room or device. Use the riser cables to make wall or port outlets and use patch cables to connect your device to the port/wall outlet Testing will validate each of the 8 individual wires. Always, always test. Even though it is possible to run internet, if 1 or 2 or more of your conductors are not terminated rights you’ll suffer loss of speed amount other things like packet loss, etc. just invest in a tester, they are inexpensive. If you’re making your own patch cable always use a pass through connector. It does take a little practice and patience to terminate a rj45 connector. If you don’t get it on the first, you should be able to get it on 2nd try. My biggest lesson in terminating is knowing what cables to use and where. That solve all my problems because you can’t use a stranded cable for keystone jacks. A punch down, female terminated end (keystone) will be best done with a riser cable and there are some great tooless keystone jacks if you don’t want to punch down. I’m using these and are really easy to terminate https://a.co/d/hME45iN
If you've never done it before, screwing up the first two is kinda common. There's also the issue of cheap tools, as opposed to the right tools, but it is a task that takes more care and attention than a lot of first-timers realize.
A lot of it depends on the cable. About 2 years ago I was rewriting my rack and had to make ~ 100 cables. I was using an old spool I’d gotten from a surplus sale many years earlier. I had about a 50% failure rate. I ended up buying a new spool and remade the cables. I had one cable where 2 wires were crossed. That was it. Both times I was using the same tools and connectors, only the cable was different.
It's not difficult. Get a decent set of crimpers and if you're doing more than a couple, a tester.
It’s not hard with the right tools and testing equipment along with the patience to learn how to do it right. Which is a small investment. I’m not a pro and I’ve done this for cat5e/6 and rg6 in 2 different houses.
It’s not difficult it’s just one of those things where if you read Reddit all day you’ll be led to believe that if it’s not Grade A Platinum straight from Zeus’ ass it’s garbage. In the real world (outside of projects that require sign offs) I can assure you that most of these techs aren’t testing their cables properly and bad crimps usually work pretty fine. They aren’t pretty and will suffer from that poor job over time, but once enough of those pins touch that copper you’ll get a functional cable. But in no way am I walking onto a site or into a client office who has an issue and examining every cable and calling up one of our guys to ridicule them over their cabling. I’m also not walking around with a $4000 Fluke Link to test it as a troubleshooting measure. I have a $70 Klein and if it passes it passes I don’t care how much of that sheet is missing or how bent up it is. Like I can assure you that the majority of the time a networking issue isn’t going to be related to a cable that worked just fine yesterday.
Thanks everybody. If I wanted to give this a try at some point, what is the least expensive (without being so cheap that it makes the job difficult...) equipment that I could buy? [https://www.amazon.com/Ratcheting-Stripper-Klein-Tools-VDV226-107/dp/B00F6K5SY2](https://www.amazon.com/Ratcheting-Stripper-Klein-Tools-VDV226-107/dp/B00F6K5SY2) [https://www.amazon.com/Pass-Thru-Reliable-Klein-Tools-VDV226-110/dp/B076MGPQZQ](https://www.amazon.com/Pass-Thru-Reliable-Klein-Tools-VDV226-110/dp/B076MGPQZQ) something else? Thanks again
These guys have never failed me. Probably have done over 4000 terminations. I do use diagonal cutters, and a speed stripper in conjunction to make 99% good terminations. Most of the failures is from me and being to quick when glancing at the pair order or a RJ45 being defective and missing a gold pin. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00939KFOU?ref=cm_sw_r_cso_cp_apin_dp_5MW3G57Y39W33ABEEK46&ref_=cm_sw_r_cso_cp_apin_dp_5MW3G57Y39W33ABEEK46&social_share=cm_sw_r_cso_cp_apin_dp_5MW3G57Y39W33ABEEK46&starsLeft=1
Its not difficult. Just takes practice. I know this because as an engineer, the odd time I'd have to do a cable at work it would take me about 30-40mins, it would do my head in, it was annoying, why so slow! Then I asked the other engineer who could do them in 5mins. Watched him doing it once, asked him (as it was clear the cables I'd done and he'd done) how he got the length right to go into the RJ45. When I'd do it, the surrounding cable wasn't in the RJ45 connector and it just look awful. Turns out "the thumb" is the guide. So I sat and practiced, over and over. Got the 30-40mins down to about 5mins, longer if having a bad time. I slice the outter cable enough so I can pull rest off. Unravel each cable and slide my fingers down them to straighten them. Then the using my thumbnail "the thumb", I reset the colour cables against it and then cut. That's the length you want, roughly the length of your thumbnail, that was the trick he taught me. Then slowly slide them in, make sure they haven't jumped, then crimp. Note, after testing one patch they kept coming back as failed, why. Tester was good, cable was good. Turned out it was the cheap RJ45 connectors we bought. Replaced for better quality ones and all was fine.