New house build, 30 - 40 cables not terminated or labelled. Cabinet time?

Tobes

Tobes

Tobes

Soldato
Joined
27 Mar 2004
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Devon
Hey people,

So I have been working with a customer who wanted some wifi extenders put it but wanted them wired up. All the rooms in the 3 story house have 2 CAT5E cables with 1 on them terminated to a wall faceplate, the other is loose inside the wall.

The room where all these cables go to is a small cupboard but only about 3 of them are labelled. Not only this but these cables are solid core and I can't for the life of me seem to fit a RJ45 connector on the end of them without crossing wires somewhere. This made the whole evening of fitting these extenders worthless.

I have spoken to the client and suggested we wire all of the ends up to a patch bay but we would also need a cabinet to house the patch bay in. He said it would be even better if all of these cables were wired so they could be used instantly. So this means a switch as well.

So I'm assuming my materials list is this:

Wall Mounted Cabinet
1x 24 Port switch
1x Patch Bay
24x Patch Cables

He already has 1 switch for the CCTV cameras so I said how all the equipment they have can be put in the cabinet. He seems quite happy to do this and knows the cost.

I would just like to ask if anyone has any recommendations as to cabinets, switches or perhaps would like to suggest anything else?

I was thinking about creating a short cable with one end bare and plugging it into a cable tester and touching the bare ends to the ends of the cables but because it's solid care cable I would still have to strip the cable and this doesn't really speed up the process when I could just punch the cable into a patch bay. It's really annoying that they are not labelled :mad: but I can see how an electrician doesn't really care and all that was asked was the cable to be fitted.

Thoughts?
 
Tobes said:
I was thinking about creating a short cable with one end bare and plugging it into a cable tester and touching the bare ends to the ends of the cables but because it's solid care cable I would still have to strip the cable and this doesn't really speed up the process when I could just punch the cable into a patch bay. It's really annoying that they are not labelled :mad: but I can see how an electrician doesn't really care and all that was asked was the cable to be fitted.

Thoughts?
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Once you haver the patch panel just terminate one pair from each cable to each port. You can then easily find what connects to what using your cable tester.
 
Yeah that's pretty much why I'm getting the patch panel. I could then fit the extenders no problem but the client said I might as wire everything up then.
 
It's effectively a home network of a family of 4 but with many guest rooms for family etc. On it is a 16 IP camera network, 8 SONAR multi room systems and a smart heating system. They wanted both the CCTV system and heating system to be able to be accessed from outside the network (done and sorted already).

Separate from that, all that will be connected to the walls are 2/3 WiFi APs. But the client wants all of the wall sockets connected and ready should he ever want to connect anything up such as TVs, PC towers etc. As right now the home sees little use as it's a retirement home/second home.

I suggested that I just connect them all up to a patch bay and then if they wanted to use a port they just need to use a patch cable and plug it into a spare slot in the router but he wasn't a fan of that idea and said straight up that every socket should be ready to go for him.
 
You should be fine with pretty much any switch then. If this was going to be a multi-occupancy house then you might want a switch with things like private VLANs, DHCP snooping, RSTP etc. so that one user messing up how they connect things doesn't down the network for everyone else.
 
Do all the modules first, then use a tone generator on each cable to label them up and then punch them down into the panel.
 
Caged said:
You should be fine with pretty much any switch then. If this was going to be a multi-occupancy house then you might want a switch with things like private VLANs, DHCP snooping, RSTP etc. so that one user messing up how they connect things doesn't down the network for everyone else.
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Yeah a unmanaged switch is what I will be after. It's only purpose is to make each socket live really.

bledd. said:
Do all the modules first, then use a tone generator on each cable to label them up and then punch them down into the panel.
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Just looked up a tone generator... well that would be pretty handy to have in this situation!

How well does a tone generator work with unshielded bundles of cable out of interest? I can't see me buying one just for this job and it's not something I can see me doing in the future but it's nice to know.

Also what do you mean by doing the modules first?
 
You said only one is terminated in each room..

Terminate the second one..

By modules, I mean the wall ports.
 
Yeah apparently it's standard practise to always run 2 CAT cables to each room in new builds. The second one is used in case of damage or if it's actually needed. It just sits behind the faceplate unused. The other cable is already punched into the wall port by the electrician.
 
I done a similar thing but only 4 ports through a wall -- I forgot to label which was what... I just ran a loose length of cat5 from the port (one end had a plug) and used a multi meter to check continuity on say the blue wire. Worked well enough. A quick way to strip the cat 5 is just use a lighter to heat the sheath and pull it off with your nail. (not the outer sheath, the inner coloured wires)

For your job you may need a helper to plug the cable in to each port at in each room.
 
Ah the lighter sounds really handy especially as its solid core cable. There's only really about 6 rooms I want to work with to try the WiFi APs so I can just plug the other end of the cable tester in there then make a mock cable and touch it to the bare wire in the "server" room. But I like the lighter trick I think that will work nicely.
 
Tobes said:
Ah the lighter sounds really handy especially as its solid core cable. There's only really about 6 rooms I want to work with to try the WiFi APs so I can just plug the other end of the cable tester in there then make a mock cable and touch it to the bare wire in the "server" room. But I like the lighter trick I think that will work nicely.
Click to expand...

quicker than punching it down. After the first one, you won't feel the melting plastic sticking to and burning your fingers ;)
 
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