Question Is this the cause of our low speeds from one room?

[sddjd]

Been working to track down a speed issue (very low, in the teens mbs) in one room of our home. I applied a line tester (tone) to the cable connecting our switch to the wall ethernet socket and couldn't get any kind of trace on the far end.

If I connect the cable to the tester source I get a strong tone at the unconnected end (that would normally go to the wall). As SOON as I connect it to the wall outlet, the signal drops to static, only providing the tone if I touch the cable a few inches from the toner.

It occurred to me that during a renovation in this room the electricians extended this ethernet line in order to move the outlet to an adjacent wall. When I removed the wall plate I found this:
Splice

Apparently a new length of (at least it's Cat5e) cable was piggybacked onto the rj45 outlet, which is pointing down/away in this image, and hidden behind a wall plate.

If this seems likely as the culprit, is there any point in trying to properly extend this line? There' s no easy way to pull a new line/drop (that would be a major project unfortunately).

Thanks for any advice.

 

[SamirD]

It occurred to me that during a renovation in this room the electricians extended this ethernet line in order to move the outlet to an adjacent wall.

I cringed as soon as I read this and knew this would be the source of the problem.

This is known as a 'daisy chain' which works fine for phone, but even after 20 years it seems that electrical contractors still don't understand that this doesn't work for ethernet.

But all hope is not lost--none at all in fact. That splice consists of two separate cables that are terminated properly on one end (hopefully). So all we need to do is use the existing keystone for one of of the cables, and punch down the second wire to a second keystone. Then you will leave you with 2x jacks in this outlet, one which goes to your demarc, and the other which only goes from this jack to the adjacent jack.

Once you have properly installed the keystones, check your toning again and both runs should be good between their ends. Then all you have to do is literally plug a small ethernet patch cable from one of the jacks to the other in the now 'dual jack' outlet and your jack on the adjacent wall should work perfectly at full speed.

 

[sddjd]

Hi Samir, thank you for the response and input- at least now our issue is a known quantity with a straightforward fix!

 

[SamirD]

Hi Samir, thank you for the response and input- at least now our issue is a known quantity with a straightforward fix!

You're welcome! It's unfortunate that I've seen this waaaay too many times in the last few decades, but it's nice that the fix is pretty simple too.

The real solution would be to have a proper wiring contractor come in and fix it and bill the electrical contractor who did it wrong. Then maybe things might change. So long as those electricians don't get punished for bad work, it will continue.

 

[sddjd]

Hi Samir, I wish! Unfortunately the electrician who performed the work is long gone.

I'm now in another conundrum- I've attached a new RJ45 connector to the cable running back to the switch. My tester shows green/ok for each lead in the cable (it has a function to confirm all eight with individual indicators simultaneously).

However, when I switch to scan mode and go back to the switch, I cannot find a tone on ANY of the network lines. I've unplugged and tested literally every ethernet cable running to the switch with no luck.

No idea now how to proceed, and unfortunately the contractor who installed the cat5e cabling labeled nothing (maybe it he was a relative of the one who made the daisy chain splice).

Just wondering if any other options for tracing this wire exist... I've checked and rechecked that I've matched the standard for all the wires in the house (all are using T568A).