Question make my own homemade ethernet cat5e cable problems?

[coolpontiac]

hi - i recently ran my own ethernet 'backhaul' from router1 to router2 (AP) about 100 feet under house. i used cat5e cable and connectors i bought online. i notice my speed drops from 150mpbs when im connected dirctely to rourter1 with a store bought cable but speed drops to 90mbs when i use my cable

i followed online instructions and was careful about the twists. any suggestions? is it realistic to make my own cable?
i should also mention that one end of the cable is the simple 'male' terminator. the other end is the female 'jack' that is part of the wall plate.

thx

 

[jimmysmitty]

Did you use a tester to certify the cable was good? Thats an important step.

Also did you use indoor or outdoor cable? If its going under the house outdoor would probably be preferable.

I haver don hundreds of runs and made thousands of cables from short to long and I always certify them for 1Gbps speeds using a Fluke.

 

[bill001g]

Looks like you have it only running at 100mbps. Likely the blue or brown pair is messed up. Still that makes little difference since you have to cut the plug off and restart. No way to even know which end so it is just guess and hope it works.

It is very tricky to get these correct when you are new doing it. Even people who make them all the time mess one up now and then. Unless I need very specific length I buy mine even though I have likely made over 1000 in my life. I no longer have access to fancy meters to test them.

I would put wall plates ie keystones on both ends. It is pretty easy to pull wires out and redo it and you can do one wire at a time. Obviously for short distances not in the wall you would not use keystones but then it is easy to just buy a cable for those cases.

 

[jsmithepa]

If u had ask this BEFORE ur venture, I would had highly suggested don't bother, buy pre-made. There are FAKE cables floating around and crimping your own looks easy but it actually takes experience.

monoprice.com well known for cable cables and more cables at $reasonable.

 

[bdginmo]

I'm going to have to echo some comments here. At the very least you need a continuity tester to verify that all 8 wires are working. But even then there's no guaranteed that you've made a quality cable. I personally find cat5e to be pretty easy once you get the hang of it, but cat6 is an exercise in madness for me. My cat6 RJ45 terminations will frequently pass a continuity test on all 8 wires but switches won't negotiate a 1 gpbs link. If you don't have an expensive certification tester then it's impossible to know if you're cable is good or not.

I've essentially given up on making my own cat6 patch cables. I buy pre-made. I will say that terminating cat5e and cat6 keystone jacks with a punchdown tool is a piece cake. I have near 100% success on those. So what you can do is put a keystone jack on one end and then use a pre-made patch cable from there.

 

[coolpontiac]

Looks like you have it only running at 100mbps. Likely the blue or brown pair is messed up. Still that makes little difference since you have to cut the plug off and restart. No way to even know which end so it is just guess and hope it works.

It is very tricky to get these correct when you are new doing it. Even people who make them all the time mess one up now and then. Unless I need very specific length I buy mine even though I have likely made over 1000 in my life. I no longer have access to fancy meters to test them.

I would put wall plates ie keystones on both ends. It is pretty easy to pull wires out and redo it and you can do one wire at a time. Obviously for short distances not in the wall you would not use keystones but then it is easy to just buy a cable for those cases.

• thanks( to everyone who replied ... i dont have any fancy test equipement to certify the cable beyond a DMM...
• its not really practical to buy store bought cable for the run under the house in the crawlspace right ? i mean you have to fish wire through holes in the studs/floor... you would be buggering up the connectors if you tried ot push them thru all that stuff

-i hear your advice on putting keystones on both 'walls'. i deliberatley avoided that because it appears that the little wires stay twisted on the male ends rather than the keystones when you attach them? I also figured more signal loss each time to you have to connect another cable in the run (because you have one more mechanical connection point. I do agree its a cleaner look rather than have the cable coming out of one of those 'open' wall plates
- i will 'redo' one end at a time and pay attention to the blue and brown pairs.
-thanks

 

[bdginmo]

Yeah, the wires tend to get untwisted a bit on the keystone jacks if you're sloppy. But, it's only for a short distance. I saw a youtube video once where the guy kept the twists all the way by separating the pairs in such a way that the twists remained even at the end of the keystone furthest from the cable sheath. Even the sloppiest of punchdowns tends to work just fine; at least on 1 gbe anyway.

And after seeing this thread I've decided to give it another shot. This time I'm going to use the Platinum Tools crimper with the passthrough RJ45 jacks. I ordered it last night. I'll try it both on cat5e and cat6 and we'll see how it goes.

 

[jsmithepa]

• I also figured more signal loss each time to you have to connect another cable in the run (because you have one more mechanical connection point.

Logical but unwarranted. That's what professional businesses do all the time, and by long experience, punching is easier and less error prone than crimping.

Hope it works out for u.

 

[jimmysmitty]

• thanks( to everyone who replied ... i dont have any fancy test equipement to certify the cable beyond a DMM...
• its not really practical to buy store bought cable for the run under the house in the crawlspace right ? i mean you have to fish wire through holes in the studs/floor... you would be buggering up the connectors if you tried ot push them thru all that stuff

-i hear your advice on putting keystones on both 'walls'. i deliberatley avoided that because it appears that the little wires stay twisted on the male ends rather than the keystones when you attach them? I also figured more signal loss each time to you have to connect another cable in the run (because you have one more mechanical connection point. I do agree its a cleaner look rather than have the cable coming out of one of those 'open' wall plates
- i will 'redo' one end at a time and pay attention to the blue and brown pairs.
-thanks

Without a proper tester you are going to have a hard time. Hopefully it is just a switched wire on one end, you should be able to see the colors through the connector to check, but if it is a faulty somewhere else in the cable you wont know without a tester.

I understand they are quite pricey but sometimes the saved time of messing with it trying to figure out why it isn't working when it was a split pair halfway down the run doesn't hurt.

 

[bdginmo]

A cheap continuity tester will go a long way. All it does is make sure that there is end-to-end connectivity and that the pinout is correct, but that's better than nothing. They can be had for $20.

 

[kanewolf]

I would recommend a tester similar to this -- https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004CI9NRM/ it has a remote that you can separate and gives you a "diagnosis" a little easier to read than just the LEDs.