Need help troubleshooting a Network Cabling Issue - Bit of a Noob

PlacidCasual

PlacidCasual

PlacidCasual

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13 May 2003
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Hi Guys

I had the house rewired in the Autumn - full re-wire new consumer unit the lot. As the boards were up I ask the electrician to run in 6 lengths of Cat 6, 2 from my study, 2 from the living room and 2 from the room my fibre to property comes in.

The electrician wired up the face plates in the 6 locations and ran the Cat6 back to the garage and left if bare. I have finally gotten around to putting plugs on the cables. The electrician left the wiring list for the plugs which wasn't standard judging by the instructions for my cabling kit. But I added the plugs as per the wiring list and put a very basic connection tester on one end and the detector on the other end and as it sequenced 1-8 through the cores they all came up in the right order. I have done this to both cables to the study and 1 to the broadband room.

I bought a TP-Link TL-SG1016PE and unmanaged 16 port switch with 8 POE ports. I chose the POE model as I may add POE security cameras or access points in the future.

So I have tried connecting my brodband router to the network cable back to the switch and then my PC to one of the ports in my study. None of the led's on the switch have lit up. I kind of expected it to show a link but nothing. I have double checked the sockets and my basic tester says they are all good going through the sequence at both ends in the right order.

Being a total noob to this I need some pointers on troubleshooting. The switch installation guide isn't much use it does mention a GUI but given I can't get a link yet I haven't reached that point. Do I unplug my laptop and connect it directly to the switch? Is there anything I need to check in the port faceplates.

Any advice would be gratefully recieved.

edit: so I took the laptop down and directly connected it using a short ethernet cable the LED lit up to say it was linked and I down loaded a configuration tool and it found the switch. So at first glance the switch works.

The wiring list for the sockets I was given was
1 Orange
2 Green
3 White Green
4 Blue
5 White Blue
6 White Orange
7 White Brown
8 Brown

Which is the order I connected my plugs with 1 on the left (as you look from behind and above).

A photo of the back the socket plate, not the greatest.

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Sparks strip the outer insulation back as the cable enters the box because that's how they do electricity, but it's not how they should wire data. You want to maintain the twists as close as possible to the termination, and also the colours do matter, splitting the pairs won't give you a working connection.

I wish electricians would all use toolless keystone jacks because it's impossible to mess those up.
 
@Caged Thx I hadn't considered the pair twist affecting data. Plainly for a basic DC test which is what I assume my tester is doing it doesn't matter but for data transfer it will do.

I'll definitely have a go at rewiring one of the plates and plugs and see how it works out.
 
If you need a punch down tool then I can recommend the Trendnet TC-PDT, which has both Krone/LSA and 110 blades included. 110 is a bit rarer in Europe but I still find things that use it. Don't use a screwdriver, you'll mash the terminals up.

I have Hager accessories and I combine their euro plates WMP1EU/WMP2EU/WMP4EU with Excel low profile Cat6 modules and it works fine.
 
So some feedback. I have rewired one plate and plug to 568b and shortened the strands to the plate following advice on YouTube video and the switch is now connected and I was able to interogate via the Set Up App.

So as suggested the wiring configuration was wrong it worked electrically just not for data. I now have another 5 plates to rewire and I can do my plugs too.

@ChrisD. @Dg834man @Caged Many thanks for your responses it helped greatly.
 
You've had solid advice, and I'm glad you got it working. Just one additional thought, here... Is it solid core or stranded core cable? You said you terminated the ends with plugs, but if it's solid core you'd be much better off adding a patch panel, punching down into the panel and then getting some short patch cables from that to the switch. Just a thought.
 
I always wondered if it mattered about those wiring methods.

I did follow them and everything worked as intended, but always thought to myself surely as long as both ends are in the same order that it wouldn't matter, and that the only purpose of the methods was to standardise things.

Guess I was wrong.
 
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