Comments on: Ethernet Wiring Advice

By: Brandon Martinez

Brandon Martinez — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 04:53:59 +0000

Also, make sure the patch-panel you have is Cat 6 compliant, occasionally you could find one that doesn’t like Cat6. Also, similar to what BLAH said above, if you are using any “twist ties” or anything like that, make sure you don’t have them super tight. Ethernet cables are terrible when it comes to pinching/stretching, bending, and will fuss at too much force.

By: Blah

Blah — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 13:26:54 +0000

I’ve done commercial cabling for a living and I can tell you that the most common reason you’ll see these problems are that the cables were stretched or torn somewhere in the wall, they weren’t terminated “punched down” properly, or that they were stripped from the main bundle too far back prior to terminating meaning that there is some un-shielded cable visible coming out of the back of the jack. Make sure that the wires aren’t stretched and cut the ends as short as possible before punching them down and they should be fine. Sometimes those jacks are defective too so changing them out won’t hurt either.

By: Lars Stjernstrøm

Lars Stjernstrøm — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:44:22 +0000

It’s not enough that they are the same in both ends, you need to go
pair, single pair, single, pair

By: Fancy J

Fancy J — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:22:38 +0000

If your in wall wiring is A and your cables which go from computer to wall are B then you won’t get connectivity. Go ahead and buy a tester but I’m sure you’ll find that when you test from punch down to wall jack you’ll pass and your computer to wall jack cables will pass but you still won’t get connectivity from computer to punch down since the orange and green pairs are swapped. It’ll be a pain but I would re-punch everything as B. I’m pretty sure the majority of pre-made ethernet cables are B anyway.

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:05:30 +0000

If you were closer, I’d lend you my Fluke.

Honestly, I’ve always outsourced my wiring needs for business, and relied either on wireless or Sling’s powerline thingy, so I can’t offer any true advice. But yes, the wiring at work is all B spec.

By: G . H I S C O T T

G . H I S C O T T — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:01:12 +0000

You say you have no connectivity but what exactly does that mean ? What test is failing to cause you to assert there is no connectivity. If you have link lights on the switch, something is happening !

By: Marc

Marc — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:28:35 +0000

The “B” side has always been the side I have used, and I have been running cable for 10 years now.

So, you are going from your belkin switch to a patch panel to the cable, to a female cat6 wall jack, to a patch cable. The only problems I could see (if all of them are not working) is that either they are punched down wrong or you have a bad switch.

Also, with Cat6, you can not split the lines….meaning that you can’t take 4 of the wires to one computer and the other 4 to another computer or phone.
You could get away with that with Cat5, but the Cat6 hardware has to use all 4 pairs of wires.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:20:29 +0000

Ill give you the nod Dave

http://www.slingmedia.com/go/slt4

Dude, I NEED my gigabit!

@PVL Figures I wire the whole damn house to A :P.. But it honestly doesn’t matter.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:01:46 +0000

I vote Powerline. ;)

By: PVL

PVL — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:46:08 +0000

I’ve always used the B standard. According to Wikipedia, the A standard is now obsolete. Like Dan said, it doesn’t matter as long as everything is the same.