making cat5

[lazarus_long54]

Hello all, I'm new here, but I'm looking for some help making cat5. My fiancee and some friends recently moved into a house and I'm trying to get some fairly longish (~150 ft) wires made up. I've gone through 10 connectors now and only made one semi-successful cable. :/ I am using the 568-B wiring pinout, making sure to strip a small enough amount that the cat5-insulation is in the connector crimp for stress relief, my wiring is good, but my cables aren't working. I'm broke so a real cable tester is out of the question for a bit (which is frustrating as well)...I'm just wondering if anyone here has a had a similar experience and maybe figured something out that I am missing.

Alex

 

[mikesgroovin]

The easiest way that I find is to leave about 2 inches of wire to work with when you are aligning them. After you line them up then trim them so that the RJ-45 connector covers the entire wire and about a 1/16 inch of the wiring jacket. This way, you are crimping the jacket cover with wire and not just the wires themselves. Also, when you are placing the connector over the wires, make sure that all eight wires are at the very end of the connector...VERY IMPORTANT, otherwise, the metal teeth will never slice into the wires when you are crimping them....making it useless.

-Mike

This may help too!

 

[lazarus_long54]

Thanks Mike,

I've been to that link a couple of times today I've been trimming the wires as you describe, and making sure the wires go all the way to the end.

I am curious, I'm being pretty careful to untwist the wires only as much as necessary (and not any further than the beginning of the big insulation); if I untwist them too much (they are probably untwisted 1" on my cables right now) could that be the cause?

I'm bout to go nuts here...=/

Alex

 

[mikesgroovin]

No, that should be fine. As long as the twist begins around the end of the RJ-45 connector you should be fine. What kind of cable are you using? Patch? Horizontal? Is it flimzy or fairly stiff? Is the cable smooth, or can you feel the twists when you run your hand across it? Are you trying to make a straight-though cable, or crossover cable?

 

[Jazzy]

The easiest way that I find is to leave about 2 inches of wire to work with when you are aligning them. After you line them up then trim them so that the RJ-45 connector covers the entire wire and about a 1/16 inch of the wiring jacket. This way, you are crimping the jacket cover with wire and not just the wires themselves. Also, when you are placing the connector over the wires, make sure that all eight wires are at the very end of the connector...VERY IMPORTANT, otherwise, the metal teeth will never slice into the wires when you are crimping them....making it useless. i agree to it n the afterwards reply BUT IF U USING SWITCH B/W THEN ITS EASYTO CHECK THE CABLES NO NEED TO PURCHASE CABLE TESTER ALL YOU HAV TO DO IS TO PLUG IN ONE END OF THE CABLE IN SWITCH N PUT THE OTHER END JACK INTO OTHER PORTS OF THE SWITCH IF THE LIGHT COMES OUT IT MEANS ITS OKAY...

 

[mikesgroovin]

Not nessesarily.....
There is only one set of wires that networking devices use to indicate a link.....
Just because the link light is on doesn't mean that you are going to have a good connection. Chances are, you'll be ok and this is a cheap/easy way to do it, but in order to to be 100% certain, you'll have to use a cable tester.

 

[lazarus_long54]

Yup, link light comes on, now I have found that if I set my adapters to run at 10 Mbps then the cables work fine, but 100 Mbps and they work not at all. I am surmising then that I have somehow made my cat5 into cat3

As for the questions about the cables, they are fairly sturdy, UTP Cat5e patch cables. You can feel the twists in it with your fingers through the insulation. I am trying to make some straight-through cables.

Alex

 

[mikesgroovin]

Ok, so you are using horizontal cable rather than patch cable. This cable is a little harder to work with as it's flexibility is limited.
As for your 10/100 MBs question, Are the devices connected both 100MBs capable? Check the NIC out and make sure that it's a 10/100 NIC rather than just a 10. Also, if you find that it is a 10/100 NIC and a 10/100 hub/switch then be sure to check the properties of the NIC and set it for 100MBs Full Duplex.

 

[lazarus_long54]

Yes, the cable is fairly stiff.

The Nic is a 10/100/1000, the router is a Linksys BEFSR41 which is 10/100. Setting the speed to autoneg yields a 100 Mbps connection which doesn't work. Setting it to 100 Full yields the same result. Setting it to 10 Full makes it work, just at 10 Mbps. While this works for now (I'm wiring this up for a bunch of girls who send email and surf the web) I'd like to know what I am doing wrong >.< I'm guessing that something about my wiring technique caused quite a bit of interference somewhere....

Alex

 

[mikesgroovin]

The problem definatly sounds to be the cable itself. What I would do is setup the network to be 10MB first, go to frys or another store and buy a standard CAT5e patch cable. Right out of the box, with no crimping, it'll get you to a point where you can pin-point the problem.