I've crimped some RJ45s for my own house, but always got wrong, and have to crimp 3 or more times to make it work (cut off connectors at both side, and re-crimp again). Any tips on it?
I rarely crimp cable anymore, but having a quality crimp tool makes a world of difference. I picked-up an Amp crimp tool secondhand for under $50. The tool is precisely built, very durable, and produces repeatable results. It's very frustrating to have a termination ruined by a poorly-made crimper.
Practice is the only way to get really good at it. I did several thousand RJ-45 terminations and a similar number of punches into 110-style jacks back in the late 90's, early 2000's. After you've done enough muscle-memory kicks-in and you get consistent, good results. If you just need a few crimps purchase pre-made certified patch cables and you'll save time (money) and frustration.
IANACT, but over the years this is the system I have developed and it has worked well for me:
- if nothing else, buy a cheap crimping kit on amazon that includes a cable tester and basic crimper.
- invest in good patch cable. the cheap stuff is much harder to work with and you'll realize the dollar you saved wasn't worth it. I've noticed the boxes (e.g., 1000ft) seem of much better quality than short length patch cables that you re-purpose. $80 for a 1000ft that will last for many years has been a good investment for me.
- cut off an inch or more of outer cable jacket
- cut off that annoying fiber string
- before you untwist the pairs, spread them wide apart in the order they'll line up: when looking at the clip side of the plug, it will normally be Brown, Green, Blue, Orange. I've memorized this order because it's the order of colors going from ground to sky (brown ground, green grass, blue sky, orange sun).
- now untwist the pairs, solid color goes on the left, striped color on the right.
- green striped wire is the exception that gets separated from its pair; move it between the blue and orange wires.
- hold the well-ordered wires tightly between your thumb and index finger and use a rocking side-to-side and back-and-forth motion to bend and comport with its final positioning. This lessens the chance it will mis-align when inserted into the plug.
- Use scissors or some other tool to clip the wire ends so they are of equal length and can extend inside the plug completely. after years of practice this has ended up being the length of my thumbnail, which is convenient since that's where I'm holding the wire as I cut.
- Put wiring into plug and view that wires enter their correct slot. Be sure to enter via clip side facing you (as that's how wires were oriented above. I prefer the clip side because it's easier to see that wires are entering properly.)
- Push cable jacket snugly into plug and rock back and forth to ensure wiring enters full length. Cable jacket should be well inside the plug past the crimp wedge.
- Crimp!
- Check that contacts have all been seated properly. As the crimper gets older it will have a tendency not to seat the contacts properly. This is a sign that it's time to invest in a new $10 crimper.
- Check that opening side of plug has wedged on top of cable jacket and not the wiring. Cable jacket should not be separable from the plug. If you don't do this, over time the jacket will separate from the plug and the wiring will eventually fail.
- When both ends are crimped check with the cable tester.
Add in there to make sure the crimp bar falls on the outer cable jacket. If it falls on the individual wires, the strain relief will be terrible and the crimp will likely be loose.
Make sure you are using solid wire cable with solid wire connectors, or stranded wire cable with stranded wire connectors. They are quite different.
I used to make a lot of Ethernet cables, but pretty much stopped when I went to Cat 6. Beyond that, you need to be careful to remain consistent 568B or 568A, etc., and it gets messy. Almost all 10GE I've ever used has been fiber, though.
Almost had a physical altercation with someone who wired a building straight through vs correctly. Amazingly you could still get a 10M link on longer runs, or a 100M link on patches.
Correctly crimping RJ45 is one of those things that seems impossible, but once you get the hang of it works out most of the time.
- Make sure your wires are extending far enough into the plug, you should see the wire fully overlap the brass spades.
- Confirm you have the right wire layout by looking through the plug before you crimp the cable.
- As mentioned in the article, the tail part of the connector is meant to cover the tip of the cable's insulation to provide a bit of stress relief, make sure it's not too short.
Does anyone know of affordable cable testing equipment? I.e. not the ones with 8 leds that just test whether there's a connection, but one that actually measures the performance? Fluke is way expensive, I imagine there must be cheaper products that don't provide all the features and build quality of Fluke but that will still give poor old me who only wires his own house and home office some assurance that I didn't screw up completely?
A Gigabit Ethernet PHY has to do quite some signal processing (line equalization) for its normal function. And there are a few chipsets that allow you to inspect the link parameters in quite some detail. For example, have a look here for screenshots of the broadcom advanced control suite.
The link has to run in 1000BaseT-Mode to make the tools show any meaningful output, so have a known-good switch connected to the "other" side. I had used them in a distant past (must have been 10 years ago or so) to find the "best" links in an otherwise messed up building installation that could be reliabily be used for higher transmission speeds.
It's of course much less information that what you'd get from a proper ethernet cable analyzer, but much, much more than what a simple "yes, I can ping the other side" can give you.
Probably the most affordable way to get some confidence is to connect two computers at either end of the cable and do a transfer speed test using iperf or something like that. If you are using random unmatched computers, do a "control" test with a short, high-quality patch cord between them to get a baseline performance measurement.
I never had any trouble; maybe you're using poor-quality cabling, or a lousy crimper. Do you happen to have one of these bad cables lying around? A close-up photo of the end might reveal something.
Comments
I've crimped some RJ45s for my own house, but always got wrong, and have to crimp 3 or more times to make it work (cut off connectors at both side, and re-crimp again). Any tips on it?
I rarely crimp cable anymore, but having a quality crimp tool makes a world of difference. I picked-up an Amp crimp tool secondhand for under $50. The tool is precisely built, very durable, and produces repeatable results. It's very frustrating to have a termination ruined by a poorly-made crimper.
Practice is the only way to get really good at it. I did several thousand RJ-45 terminations and a similar number of punches into 110-style jacks back in the late 90's, early 2000's. After you've done enough muscle-memory kicks-in and you get consistent, good results. If you just need a few crimps purchase pre-made certified patch cables and you'll save time (money) and frustration.
IANACT, but over the years this is the system I have developed and it has worked well for me:
- if nothing else, buy a cheap crimping kit on amazon that includes a cable tester and basic crimper.
- invest in good patch cable. the cheap stuff is much harder to work with and you'll realize the dollar you saved wasn't worth it. I've noticed the boxes (e.g., 1000ft) seem of much better quality than short length patch cables that you re-purpose. $80 for a 1000ft that will last for many years has been a good investment for me.
- cut off an inch or more of outer cable jacket
- cut off that annoying fiber string
- before you untwist the pairs, spread them wide apart in the order they'll line up: when looking at the clip side of the plug, it will normally be Brown, Green, Blue, Orange. I've memorized this order because it's the order of colors going from ground to sky (brown ground, green grass, blue sky, orange sun).
- now untwist the pairs, solid color goes on the left, striped color on the right.
- green striped wire is the exception that gets separated from its pair; move it between the blue and orange wires.
- hold the well-ordered wires tightly between your thumb and index finger and use a rocking side-to-side and back-and-forth motion to bend and comport with its final positioning. This lessens the chance it will mis-align when inserted into the plug.
- Use scissors or some other tool to clip the wire ends so they are of equal length and can extend inside the plug completely. after years of practice this has ended up being the length of my thumbnail, which is convenient since that's where I'm holding the wire as I cut.
- Put wiring into plug and view that wires enter their correct slot. Be sure to enter via clip side facing you (as that's how wires were oriented above. I prefer the clip side because it's easier to see that wires are entering properly.)
- Push cable jacket snugly into plug and rock back and forth to ensure wiring enters full length. Cable jacket should be well inside the plug past the crimp wedge.
- Crimp!
- Check that contacts have all been seated properly. As the crimper gets older it will have a tendency not to seat the contacts properly. This is a sign that it's time to invest in a new $10 crimper.
- Check that opening side of plug has wedged on top of cable jacket and not the wiring. Cable jacket should not be separable from the plug. If you don't do this, over time the jacket will separate from the plug and the wiring will eventually fail.
- When both ends are crimped check with the cable tester.
Add in there to make sure the crimp bar falls on the outer cable jacket. If it falls on the individual wires, the strain relief will be terrible and the crimp will likely be loose.
I updated with your wording to make this clearer.
Make sure you are using solid wire cable with solid wire connectors, or stranded wire cable with stranded wire connectors. They are quite different.
I used to make a lot of Ethernet cables, but pretty much stopped when I went to Cat 6. Beyond that, you need to be careful to remain consistent 568B or 568A, etc., and it gets messy. Almost all 10GE I've ever used has been fiber, though.
Almost had a physical altercation with someone who wired a building straight through vs correctly. Amazingly you could still get a 10M link on longer runs, or a 100M link on patches.
Wait, what did the person you argued with do wrong? I don't understand.
I think by "straight through" he meant that the ends were wired with pairs on 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, and 7/8, instead of the correct 1/2, 3/6, 4/5, 7/8.
Exactly. I meant "rollover" I think. That kind of cable is used for console cables for some systems, but not for high speed data networking.
(Not straight vs crossover)
Correctly crimping RJ45 is one of those things that seems impossible, but once you get the hang of it works out most of the time.
- Make sure your wires are extending far enough into the plug, you should see the wire fully overlap the brass spades.
- Confirm you have the right wire layout by looking through the plug before you crimp the cable.
- As mentioned in the article, the tail part of the connector is meant to cover the tip of the cable's insulation to provide a bit of stress relief, make sure it's not too short.
Does anyone know of affordable cable testing equipment? I.e. not the ones with 8 leds that just test whether there's a connection, but one that actually measures the performance? Fluke is way expensive, I imagine there must be cheaper products that don't provide all the features and build quality of Fluke but that will still give poor old me who only wires his own house and home office some assurance that I didn't screw up completely?
A Gigabit Ethernet PHY has to do quite some signal processing (line equalization) for its normal function. And there are a few chipsets that allow you to inspect the link parameters in quite some detail. For example, have a look here for screenshots of the broadcom advanced control suite.
https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~brecht/servers/docs/PowerEdge-2600/...
The link has to run in 1000BaseT-Mode to make the tools show any meaningful output, so have a known-good switch connected to the "other" side. I had used them in a distant past (must have been 10 years ago or so) to find the "best" links in an otherwise messed up building installation that could be reliabily be used for higher transmission speeds.
It's of course much less information that what you'd get from a proper ethernet cable analyzer, but much, much more than what a simple "yes, I can ping the other side" can give you.
Probably the most affordable way to get some confidence is to connect two computers at either end of the cable and do a transfer speed test using iperf or something like that. If you are using random unmatched computers, do a "control" test with a short, high-quality patch cord between them to get a baseline performance measurement.
The smartest advice I've received on Cat5 is don't cut off both sides at once; one of them might be good.
I never had any trouble; maybe you're using poor-quality cabling, or a lousy crimper. Do you happen to have one of these bad cables lying around? A close-up photo of the end might reveal something.
Check out EZ-RJ45: http://www.ezrj45.com/
Do you have anything to do with ezrj45.com?
It seriously looks like they're ripping off telephoneparts.com: http://telephoneparts.com/index.cgi?category=EZRJ45 (For example, compare http://www.ezrj45.com/ezrj45plugs.php to http://telephoneparts.com/index.cgi?product=EZRJ45/Plugs/CAT... ).
The two websites are operated by the same company. I have nothing to do with them; I'm just a happy user of EZ-RJ45.
Look at the very first link on the home page (excluding the menu) :)