Does quality matter for 10 meter ethernet cable?

I have Cat5e, a massive reel which the VM engineer gave me from his van. Terminated it all myself and wired from outside of the house to inside to the SH and then from the router to upstairs machines. No performance issues through all weather conditions, I have protected the cable facing outside with foam wrapping often used on radiator piping. Estimate the length at around 20 metres.

My connection is 120Mbit. All points on the LAN go via a Gigabit switch.
 
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I have some difficult telling green and orange apart especially when they are very small like in eternet colours.

I only see "dark orange" and "light orange" with my eyes, I presume light orage is actual orange and the dark orange is green.

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This seems to be labelled wrong. T568A starts with green and T568B stars with orange. Am I correct?

Can someone tell me if this is based on looking at the rj45 adapter prong facing you or the opposite side.. I suppose it doesn't matter as long as it's consistent on both sides. But would be helpful to know the correct way.


The labelling in the cable I got reads IEEE568B on the skin - I presume that means it's T568B.

Thanks
 
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The colours are correct, the labels are wrong. How did you manage to find the only incorrect diagram on the entire Web?

Use T568B unless you have a good reason not to.

Every diagram I've seen assumes that the plug's clip is facing down/away from you.
 
bremen1874 said:
The colours are correct, the labels are wrong. How did you manage to find the only incorrect diagram on the entire Web?

Use T568B unless you have a good reason not to.

Every diagram I've seen assumes that the plug's clip is facing down/away from you.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

it was the only image I could find that had both illustrations side by side so will help guide my colour blindness.
 
Here's another reason why cheap ethernet cables are bad.

Really poor quality, exterior protective shell is loose areund the cables.

Cables aren't coloured correctly. The white/colour striped cables have blended into a light colour. Was very difficult to determine what colour it was supposed to be.

In the end I took a punt, said orange, green, brown are light to dark in that colour. So I just guessed what colours they were meant to be and managed to work.

Quick question: If the cable is connected and internet works perfectly fine, uploads/downloads fine, does that mean the cable is crimped completely fine? If it was crimped in the wrong order it wouldn't work, is that correct?

5r9g.jpg


to be fair this was £4.50 for 30 meters and was pre-crimped. Seems to have done the job and like the say you get what you pay for.
 
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The exterior casing of the cable is usually fairly loose, even on decent cable.

The colours don't really matter, but the pairs do. You should have been able to identify the different pairs as they'd be twisted together.

So one pair for 1-2, another for 4-5, a third for 7-8 and a final pair split across 3-6. If you've managed that you'll be fine.

It is quite easy to create a cable that'll work for 10/100 and fail for Gigabit, but only worry about that if it happens.
 
They weren't twisted - that was the other issue.

I noticed on my 10/100 switch that there were just 3 pins on it out of 8. Is that what you are referring to? that 10/100 doesn't even use all the wires therefore can configure it wrong but still work?
 
If it wasn't twisted then it's junk. You're only using very short lengths, but I'm still slightly surprised that it's working at all.

10/100 only uses two pairs, 1-2 and 3-6. Gigabit needs all four pairs.

For reference this is what some fairly decent Cat5e is supposed to look like...

V6lgINXl.png.jpg
 
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justr unsheated about 5cm of it. Definately untwisted.

If it gives me problems I'll replace it with new branded cables. for the time being it's fine. Only need it to connect to the router.
 
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