Question Ethernet cable wasn't working while pinched by the couch - why?

[Dimitri001]

This is not a problem, because it has been resolved, but I'm curious about what the explanation behind it is.

I came home and found that the internet connection wasn't working (nor LAN), after some searching, I realized the problem was that while cleaning the room, I'd dropped the couch onto the ethernet cable. Once I got the cable out from under, the connection was restored.

Now, I don't get how this is possible, isn't the cable just conducting electrons. Was the passage of the electrons really obstructed by the couch pinching the cable? At the end of the day the cable is a copper wire, isn't it? I don't imagine a copper wire can be pinched, there's not much give to copper.

 

[Lutfij]

Is it possible to parse the category of the cable? Might want to also include a picture to the degree of the pinch. Often times when the wires inside the core are snapped partially, you're going to experience network issues. I'm assuming that the area in which you'd pinched the cable would now be the weakest link. If you bend in the afflicted area, you should null the connection from your ISP to the NIC.

 

[alceryes]

This is not a problem, because it has been resolved, but I'm curious about what the explanation behind it is.

I came home and found that the internet connection wasn't working (nor LAN), after some searching, I realized the problem was that while cleaning the room, I'd dropped the couch onto the ethernet cable. Once I got the cable out from under, the connection was restored.

Now, I don't get how this is possible, isn't the cable just conducting electrons. Was the passage of the electrons really obstructed by the couch pinching the cable? At the end of the day the cable is a copper wire, isn't it? I don't imagine a copper wire can be pinched, there's not much give to copper.

If it was caused by the 'pinch' that would mean that there's a break in one (or more) of the 8 thin cables inside.
If you replaced the cable then you can carefully disect the pinched area for yourself to find the break. Of course, it could also be one of the 3-4 other things you did in diagnosing the issue and you're just attributing the actual cause to the pinch.

 

[bill001g]

I would suspect you actually broke one of the wires. You just got lucky that it now makes contact. I suspect if you move the area near the damage around you will get intermittent failures. If you had the fancy testing meter they use to test cable it would likely show the cable has a degraded capacity. If the damage to the wire is bad enough it might even be able to see the damage and tell you how far from the end of the cable it is.