CAT 5 wiring

[[email protected]]

I've never done CAT 5 wiring - what do I need to
know before I do a run of it in my house?

I have the cable - I will need to buy everything
else, including any special tools if needed.
I don't know what "everything else" is.

I can't begin to count the miles of rope/AC/etc
I've run or boxes installed - running it isn't
the issue. It's terminating the cable that I
am asking about.

 

[SQLit]

I've never done CAT 5 wiring - what do I need to
know before I do a run of it in my house?

I have the cable - I will need to buy everything
else, including any special tools if needed.
I don't know what "everything else" is.

I can't begin to count the miles of rope/AC/etc
I've run or boxes installed - running it isn't
the issue. It's terminating the cable that I
am asking about.

Black Box.com has some good information on the color codes. You can look at
the tools there or Jensen tools.com. Personally unless your going to make a
living at doing this I would go to Radio Shack and get what I need.

 

[[email protected]]

An RJ45 crimper is a nice touch but beyond that it is just regular hand tools.
The string in the cable is to strip the jacket. Wire strippers will almost
always ding the wire. Peel it back far enough to get the string, rip the jacket
open with the string and cut off that part you "peeled".
All of the connections are Insulation Displacement so you don't strip the
conductors.
You could buy a 110 punch blade but the plastic one packaged with the keystones
will work for a casual user.

Great! Thanks for the info. One more question - can I do this?
Room1Router-----Room2----Room3----Room4
all on one port from the router? Essentially, running from
the router to the first rj45 where two cables are connected
to the wiring side of the rj45 - an in bound and an outbound
both connected to the rj45 - ie spliced in the rj45.

 

[Kilowatt]

If you want it to work you really don't need much.

If you want it CAT 5 certified you should use CAT 5 tools.

 

[Kilowatt]

No.

Great! Thanks for the info. One more question - can I do this?
Room1Router-----Room2----Room3----Room4
all on one port from the router? Essentially, running from
the router to the first rj45 where two cables are connected
to the wiring side of the rj45 - an in bound and an outbound
both connected to the rj45 - ie spliced in the rj45.

 

[[email protected]]

Home run everything back to the point you want to be your hub. I have mine next
to the PC in my living room, which was a mistake. The whole point of
"structured wiring" is to radiate from a single point that you can use to host
your routers, hubs etc. I ended up with a cludge of stuff next to my PC that
looks like the bridge of the enterprise. It should really be in my wiring
closet. (or so my wife says)
It is what happens when you start wiring without a plan.
If you do have multiple uses in a certain spot, you can drop a hub in there.
Cat 5e can even support more than one LAN in the cable but that is unsupported
officially. What is verboten in a business environment is running the phone
along with the LAN in a single cable. Ring spikes will spike your data. I doubt
you will notice in your home (error recovery will deal with it) but you are
still dealing with 100v or so when the phone rings.
There are a lot of "throughput" issues that are significant with 20 users
banging a LAN but will probably never show up at home.

I assume you are wiring for Ethernet 10/100 networking?
Logically this is a bus (pure collision) but physically there needs to be a hub
or router at every termination of a cable to connect send and recieve data.
With 2 machines you can use a twisted cable but at 3 that won't work. Think
RS232 send/rec data and the null modem idea.
I have some "bullet points" from my IBM connnectivity classes about hubs,
routers, gateways and bridges if you want them. I will have to scan them into
PDFs
Basically a hub just connects all the cables together and gets the send/recieve
going the right way.
A router connects 2 same type LANs together like the WAN from the cable modem
to your LAN and provides some simple firewalling
A bridge connects different types of lan together (Token Ring to Ethernet for
example) although they can be the same type. You can have firewalling there
too.
A gateway gets you into entirely different architectures. Mainframe CICS to
LAN, for example.

Thanks again - nice description!

You have it right - it's ethernet 10/100 with
2 PC's permanently wired to a Linksys router in
room 1. Periodically I connect my third - a
thinkpad - to the router, leaving 1 port available.
I wanted to connect the 4th PC, which "lives"
downstairs in room 4, via wireless to avoid crawling
around in the attic to install cat5. It connects with
the new wireless router plugged into the last port
on the Linksys, but it is very low signal strength
and gets knocked off

My new plan is to wire a single rj45 in room2, permanently
attached to the last available port on the Linksys. Then
I'll plug the new wireless router into that hub - the new PC
is in the room directly below. I already tested that with
a long cat5 jumper cable, and it connects reliably with max
signal strength. The wireless easily works in rooms 2, 3, & 4
when it is installed in room2.

 

[SueMarkP]

I've never done CAT 5 wiring - what do I need to
know before I do a run of it in my house?

I have the cable - I will need to buy everything
else, including any special tools if needed.
I don't know what "everything else" is.

I can't begin to count the miles of rope/AC/etc
I've run or boxes installed - running it isn't
the issue. It's terminating the cable that I
am asking about.

Here's some stuff to read:

http://www.hometech.com/learn/index.html (look at the "common" category
items)
http://www.wildtracks.cihost.com/homewire/wg_fback.html#PhoneLAN

 

[[email protected]]

This is a star wired network from the hub out, no daisy chaining. Bear in mind
you can use one cat5 for 2 paths so you could hit 2 rooms with one cable. You
could also put a hub in all but the last down stream room. They are cheap.



room1 just PC to room2 hub conn to room2 PC, out to room 3 (hub/pc) to room4
with just a PC.. Each hub is a virtual splitter

Nice!

I finished the wiring today - just 1 room at the farthest
point - works fine. I discovered the Home Depot has cat5
stuff, as well as Rat Shack. When we need the other two
rooms, I'll use the wireless or your hub idea. Right now,
I *don't* want to go back crawling in the attic.