Cat 5 running through house. Tester says OK.

[findme29]

Hi Guys,

I've spent a few hours troubleshooting with no positive results and thought I'd reach out for help.
So I have ethernet running throughout the house that was originally split for phone use. I fixed it for ethernet a couple years ago, and it worked fine. Recently it stopped functioning and I traced the problem back to the keystone jack that had a faulty pin. After replacing the jack the tester shows all 8 lights working and the lights light up in sync. I'm going from a router lan port to the wan port of a router in the basement and it the router downstairs doesn't see the cable. Even after going from the modem upstairs directly to the wan port the router doesn't see the cable. Any ideas in next steps?

 

[BadAsAl]

Have you tried a different LAN cable? If you are connecting modem to the router via a long cable running through the house, take the router to where the modem is and plug it in with another LAN cable and see if it works. If it does then the original connection (LAN cable and anything else between modem and router) is faulty. I have seen this myself in an office, the tester said everything was fine but running another LAN cable between the modem and router worked while the one original LAN cable running through the ceiling would not work.

 

[findme29]

Have you tried a different LAN cable? If you are connecting modem to the router via a long cable running through the house, take the router to where the modem is and plug it in with another LAN cable and see if it works. If it does then the original connection (LAN cable and anything else between modem and router) is faulty. I have seen this myself in an office, the tester said everything was fine but running another LAN cable between the modem and router worked while the one original LAN cable running through the ceiling would not work.

The point is to get the cable to work. The router works, but i need to physically connect my downstairs router to the main upstairs one in order to created an extended network. I can't replace the cable because of how its run through the house. I only have access to small parts of it and the ends.

 

[BadAsAl]

Yup, I get what you are doing. But the cable running through the house is the issue then if you know the modem and all your routers are working properly, which is what my post was saying to test and confirm. You could try doing a continuity test on each strand of wire on the cable but other than that I don't know how else you figure out the issue since you don't have access to the wire for the most part. Like I said this happened in an office I worked on and they just ended up replacing the cable.

 

[jsmithepa]

Things that can go wrong in your situation:

1. Cable to jacks becomes loose, not punch down properly to begin with. Fix: re-punch.
2. Changes is been made that you are not aware or you are not disclosing.
3. Critters bit into the cable.
4. You said wire-phone converted to wire-ethernet, did you purposed all 8-wires? if not all kind of things can happen.

Stuff like this is difficult to get it resolve on a forum. Often times the user make this work LITERALLY and you are doing things not knowing why you are doing it, following some comment or picture that may/not apply to you. There is so much we can tell you in a few posts what to look for, including something as obvious to us Pros as clean the copper if seem corroded, but if we have to tell you this literally and it becomes impossible.

Wiring an ethernet cable is conceptually simple, point A to point B, using all 8 wires, following EIA 568a/b convention, punched down with a spring-loaded tool for reliability.

 

[findme29]

Things that can go wrong in your situation:

1. Cable to jacks becomes loose, not punch down properly to begin with. Fix: re-punch.
2. Changes is been made that you are not aware or you are not disclosing.
3. Critters bit into the cable.
4. You said wire-phone converted to wire-ethernet, did you purposed all 8-wires? if not all kind of things can happen.

Stuff like this is difficult to get it resolve on a forum. Often times the user make this work LITERALLY and you are doing things not knowing why you are doing it, following some comment or picture that may/not apply to you. There is so much we can tell you in a few posts what to look for, including something as obvious to us Pros as clean the copper if seem corroded, but if we have to tell you this literally and it becomes impossible.

Wiring an ethernet cable is conceptually simple, point A to point B, using all 8 wires, following EIA 568a/b convention, punched down with a spring-loaded tool for reliability.

I agree that it's difficult to resolve, I basically gave up and setup the second router as a Wifi repeater. The curious thing I can't understand is why the tester shows all wires are go and still the router doesn't see the cable.

I guess I was looking for troubleshooting steps. The only other option I can think of at this point is to redo the keystone jacks at both ends, then open whatever old phone jacks I can find in the walls and redo cables I mended with electrical tape. Maybe you I cut them and use a idc junction box or jelly beans.

 

[tiredteck]

Your other old jacks should have nothing to do with the point to point network wiring. If the other jacks are connected with the basement wire that is a problem. You should definitely not be using tape or beaners to make connections in a LAN.

Your wire test has to be from point a, upstairs, to point b in the basement with nothing else connected to the wire.

You said you are using the WAN port. Did you disconnect it when you fixed the other end? I'm thinking the problem may be the WAN port on the router was shorted or the router is bad as you cannot get it to work when connected to your modem. I've seen all the lights properly working on a bad router while the router did not function at all.

You can try a different router or You may want to reconfigure and use the LAN port on the remote router.

tt/2

 

[bill001g]

Ethernet is extremely sensitive to the wire quality. This is why there is a actual standard that define things like twists per inch and stuff for cat5e and other cables. There are actual standard as to how far you are allowed to untwist the wire when it is terminated into jacks. Most times it is pretty tolerant of wiring that is out of spec. You have to be very careful how you spice the wire. Every splice degrade the ability of the cable to carry signal.

The cheap meter you have is extremely basic. If you took a much of electrical extension cords and managed to hook them up to a jack the cheap tester would tell you cable is fine even though it would never work because the wire is not the proper type.

Unfortunately the tester you really need that will test cable properly no individual can afford...some small cable installers have problems spending over $1000 for a meter.

The correct method to splice ethernet cable is with a special splice punch down. It allows you to punch the wires down and keep the wires and pair correctly twisted. Even this though adds resistance to the cable and can cause problems.

The best method to do this without this is to untwist as little as then solder them.

 

[findme29]

Your other old jacks should have nothing to do with the point to point network wiring. If the other jacks are connected with the basement wire that is a problem. You should definitely not be using tape or beaners to make connections in a LAN.

Your wire test has to be from point a, upstairs, to point b in the basement with nothing else connected to the wire.

You said you are using the WAN port. Did you disconnect it when you fixed the other end? I'm thinking the problem may be the WAN port on the router was shorted or the router is bad as you cannot get it to work when connected to your modem. I've seen all the lights properly working on a bad router while the router did not function at all.

You can try a different router or You may want to reconfigure and use the LAN port on the remote router.

tt/2

Ethernet is extremely sensitive to the wire quality. This is why there is a actual standard that define things like twists per inch and stuff for cat5e and other cables. There are actual standard as to how far you are allowed to untwist the wire when it is terminated into jacks. Most times it is pretty tolerant of wiring that is out of spec. You have to be very careful how you spice the wire. Every splice degrade the ability of the cable to carry signal.

The cheap meter you have is extremely basic. If you took a much of electrical extension cords and managed to hook them up to a jack the cheap tester would tell you cable is fine even though it would never work because the wire is not the proper type.

Unfortunately the tester you really need that will test cable properly no individual can afford...some small cable installers have problems spending over $1000 for a meter.

The correct method to splice ethernet cable is with a special splice punch down. It allows you to punch the wires down and keep the wires and pair correctly twisted. Even this though adds resistance to the cable and can cause problems.

The best method to do this without this is to untwist as little as then solder them.

Somehow, Somewhere this cable is getting interference. I'm going to spend a better part of this weekend trying to figure this out.