Tips on making own LAN Cables?

[FatRakoon]

I have been half heartedly doing this for some time now.

Mnay years ago I wired up my entire home with ethernet, and what I did, was use the sockets and so it was fairly straight forward and so nothing was a biggie to me.

Now, I have over the years bought myself a coupple of crimps that let me make up my own Ehternet cables, and I have had varying levels of failure, from plain and simple "Nope - its not working" all the way to "Cough Cough, open the window to clear the smoke". but very rarely have I actually made a calbe that has been perfect and I ended up just buying a cable of a good enough length.

Now, I have all the tools ( I think ) that are for making up a cable, but I make so many mistakes, that I end up by the time the calbe actually works, I have wasted half dozen plugs and about 6 inches of cable.

Has anyone any tips of advise or heck, even a link to a perfect step by step for noobs guide to making up Ethernet cables, then I would be in your debt.

Thanks.

 

[FatRakoon]

Of course I was joking with that! - I was in fact remembering a picture I saw a while back, where Homer simpson had a box of corn flakes in one hand, a jug of milk in the other, and there was a bowl with flames coming from it on the table and he had a puzzled look on his face! - thats me that is! LOL

Ok, well there is a few things I need to say here, but yes, cables are ridiculously cheap and thats absolutely true I fully admit that, and in 95% of all needs, a ready made purchased one is more than good enough, lets not cut the mustard.

The thing is, that I want to re-do my entire network, and this time I want to do it with ZERO excess cable.

When it comes to how I did the sockets etc, there was no waste because I had the cable following the wall and its hidden by trunking and at most, I have an inch slack maybe between sockets, its very efficient, but Im looking at some of the cabling here, and there is more loops than a fairground ride in here and its all from different things... I can see quite clearly, that just around the cables that I have near my feet and then over near the Server and also near the Media center, I would save myself a few dozen feet of cabling ( And no, I dont think Im joking either ) That said, in m yliving room alone, there is currently 8 Systems connected to 2 different switches, and thats how sad my life is it the moment, but hey ho!

Now, in a small moment of me typically being me, I have been analysing my cables and I have just done a small and simple mistake, and on verifying this mistake I did indeed see how much of a pleb I have been.

I have not been swapping over the Green+White and the Blue+White.

I keep running my cables through the tester and wire 2 never shows up as connected and then 3,4,5,6 seem random and only 1,7 and 8 seemed to be reliable but this seemed to be the case for all of them.

I just sat myself down and went through it all V-E-R-Y slowly and also another thing that I keep on doing, that I really need to slap myself fo,r, is that I strip each wire individually and then one by one, I feed the wire into the lug, hoping that he ones I have already done, dont pop out.

Again, this time I just gave myself about half an inch and I kept the wires unstripped and as straight as I could, and in the right order, pushed them all in and they looked good, so I crimped them and tested and viola! - I bloody did it.

I just grabbed a couple from the now huge pile of duff cables and I just snipped the both ends off, not going to argue over whether one or the other end is good, I redid them both and FFS blow me down, that also worked now too!

Long strory made still long, just a little bit shorter, I have just fixed up 7 cables and they are all good. I knew it was all down to technique and also of course the fact that I neded to swap the BLU+WHT with the GRN+WHT but the tester is showing me a nice 1-8 lights all in the correct sequence.

Anyway, many thanks mate.