Question about network wiring

amrogers3

Gawd
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Nov 7, 2010
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Hello and Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/etc etc.. :D

I wanted to run a question by you guys. There is a cable designated as "Main" in the picture which is bringing internet into the house, 4 lines of main are connected to the power supply and 4 lines are connected to 4 lines of a CAT5e cable running from the network panel to a wall outlet. Initially, the wall outlet was a single ethernet cable coming from the network panel. The tech split the original port that was there into 2 RJ45 ports as can be seen in the picture below. So 4 lines of the original cable is bringing internet to the WAN port of the router (Red port on wall). 4 lines of the original cable is taking traffic from router to network switch.

The connection seem solid. 25-27 Mbps and 9-14 ms ping but wanted to check with you guys if this is the correct way to do this or if the tech should have done this differently?

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Wow...that's wrong.

Well, I'm not quite sure I understand the story, but if he basically split the 4-pairs into 2-pairs and wired it appropriately, it will work but only at Fast Ethernet (100Mb). Gigabit won't be supported.
 
tried to make the diagram less confusing.

What is the best way to fix this cluster? Do I need to run two separate lines from wall to network panel. One dedicated to WAN port and one dedicated to outbound traffic from router?

Why are 4 wires being used for power supply?
 
Wires plugged into the UPS should be going to the ONT. To power the ONT and to send alarms from the UPS to the provider. Looks like they used cat5 for this purpose. Is the ONT outside? Can you take a picture of the entire setup?
 
No problem at all.

I will add a switch in between the router and alarm. I will also plug the loose CAT cables in the switch as well.

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Buy a wired router for your network panel. Make it the edge device for your network. Connect your planned new switch to the Lan side of the new router and connect the other room drops to the switch. Return the Cat5 running to your existing wireless router to being a single 8 wire network cable. Setup your existing wireless router as an internal only wireless access point that is also connected to the new switch.
 
That is the worse cable stripping and termination job for CAT cables I've ever seen. My OCD is triggered.
 
Yes it is pretty terrible. Since my first post, they managed to cut the cable installing my next door neighbors internet. Now, they have to dig up my yard running new fiber. Word of advice, for the the love of God, NEVER EVER get service with a company called Entouch. However bad you think your internet is, it is light years ahead of these yahoos.
 
Holy shit, that's terrible.

The proper way (network side, ignoring the security system) would be:

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The router could be wireless or wired only with wifi provided by a proper wifi AP. If you have less than 4 network runs you want to use a simple consumer wireless router should do the trick, just make sure it has gigabit ports.
 
If you have less than 4 network runs you want to use a simple consumer wireless router should do the trick, just make sure it has gigabit ports.

Actually with that wiring, I'd insist on only100Mb ports.
 
Actually with that wiring, I'd insist on only100Mb ports.

Everyone here bitching about the wiring has obviously never worked in the field. CAT5 is very resilient. Not saying that anything he has is proper, but it will work.
 
Everyone here bitching about the wiring has obviously never worked in the field. CAT5 is very resilient. Not saying that anything he has is proper, but it will work.

I have worked in the 'field'. If it is CAT5, it won't do gig. Even at CAT5e, unless all 4 pairs are used, it won't do gig. I'm going by the way it was split up...although the hosts would probably only negotiate 100Mb anyway if those pairs are missing.
 
I have worked in the 'field'. If it is CAT5, it won't do gig. Even at CAT5e, unless all 4 pairs are used, it won't do gig. I'm going by the way it was split up...although the hosts would probably only negotiate 100Mb anyway if those pairs are missing.

CAT5 and CAT5e both do gig if all four pairs are used, however I wasn't talking about the two cables that are split.

I shouldn't have quoted you, but you were the last person to bitch about the poor wiring so you were the winner.
 
get rid of that cable split.:mad:

its gonna be the bottleneck of your network.

:D
 
You should post that in /r/cablefail on Reddit. :D

But if it works....lol. I don't understand why people like to strip cables that far though, that is such a mess. I personally would want to completely redo that if it was me. That cable split is scary as well, what exactly are they doing with that, are they actually sending power somewhere or something? I hope that's fused. :eek:
 
The router could be wireless or wired only with wifi provided by a proper wifi AP. If you have less than 4 network runs you want to use a simple consumer wireless router should do the trick, just make sure it has gigabit ports.

I think I see where you are going with this and I like it. What about segregating the devices? I currently have 2 wireless routers. One apple extreme and the other is a linksys54G I installed DDWRT. An idea is to put a wired router on the edge and put one of the wireless router on a separate VLAN. I currently have about 8 ethernet ports I need to connect so I am hooking them up to a switch. What do you recommend is the best setup for what I currently have?

I got the wiring fixed. I now have two separate ethernet cables instead of splitting one cable into 4 wire pairs. One for internet and one connected to the switch.

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What you have will (does) work, but you won't achieve greater than 100 Mbps connections either to or from the router connected to the two wall jacks. The connections are poorly terminated, but probably good enough. Ideally, you want to maintain the twists of the two wires within each colored pair up to as near as you can to the plug or jack, plus maintain the twist between the individual pairs within the jacket.

You could keep that mess if 100 Mbps is sufficient, or try one of at least three other options:

  1. You could simply locate the wireless router at the network panel. But if that doesn't give you good wireless coverage, it won't be a solution. I'm guessing that must be why you have the setup you have now.

  2. Run a second Cat5e cable from the network panel to the room with the wall jacks. You'd still be using only the one wireless router, and the connections would be much the same. But it would clean up the wiring and give you 4 pairs (a whole cable) running to each jack. So you'd still have a WAN and a LAN jack on that wall port.

  3. As discussed above, use a separate router (wired only) located at the network panel, plus a wireless access point located elsewhere in the home, such as at that wall jack. You can then take the single run of Cat5e to the wall plate and terminate all four pairs on a single jack, and eliminate the second jack.
 
I think I see where you are going with this and I like it. What about segregating the devices? I currently have 2 wireless routers. One apple extreme and the other is a linksys54G I installed DDWRT. An idea is to put a wired router on the edge and put one of the wireless router on a separate VLAN. I currently have about 8 ethernet ports I need to connect so I am hooking them up to a switch. What do you recommend is the best setup for what I currently have?

I got the wiring fixed. I now have two separate ethernet cables instead of splitting one cable into 4 wire pairs. One for internet and one connected to the switch.

Two cables going to that wall port? You could just call it a day.

Separate devices does give some hardware flexibility, and in your setup it simplifies the wiring by only requiring one cable run to the wireless access point.

Why do you want to run the wireless on a separate VLAN?
 
That's just terribad. Only way I can describe it. Especially for fibre service.
 
I've worked in network ops for the two largest telcos in the US and that looks like a pretty standard setup. From what I can see, the tech used the main cat5e feed going to your panel for power and data to/from the ONT (which they aren't suppose to do but it's pretty common). The correct way is a dedicated cat5e for power and a separate cat5e for data. Made a quick diagram on what the ideal setup would be, but in the field isn't easily or feasibly done. As for terminating the cat5e that way, just pure laziness. Running a 2nd cat5e from your panel to the router would be what I would've done also, JJ's and dead parrot's advice is spot on too.

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Wow...that's wrong.

Well, I'm not quite sure I understand the story, but if he basically split the 4-pairs into 2-pairs and wired it appropriately, it will work but only at Fast Ethernet (100Mb). Gigabit won't be supported.

Splitting a run into 2, I haven't seen anyone do that in years...

Waaaay back in the day (circa 2000), I was on a number of projects cleaning up a bunch of outlying area school districts from a goofball "consultant" that did the "split runs in the same cable" game to wire up 2 classrooms with the same run. He ran the cable down the inside of the wall and cut a wall jack into opposite sides of the wall. The same guy also used 4 and 8 port hubs up in the ceilings to daisy chain back to the main closet, ending up 8-10 hubs deep in a few places. Oh yeah, everything was setup as statics as well because DHCP was so unreliable. No documentation and numerous duplicate statics. They wondered why the network was sooooooo slow and timed out constantly.

The funny thing is that I recently found out that this individual is now running the CS dept at the local community college.
 
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