running cat5e between 2 keystone jacks

sparks

2[H]4U
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Jun 19, 2004
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Do you wire them straight thru or do you crossover one end?
Heck I don't know I am putting in a jack at my router and another in the den to plug in a switch or whatever I need there.

I hate these monoprice jacks, China Junk, they don't have anything on the jack for color coding just a list on the back of the package for A or B type wiring. Which should I follow or does it matter?
 
You can use one or the other. That will make you a straight cable. If you do A on one end and B on the other then you will have a crossover cable.
 
Think of it this way, you want the jack in your den to be the same as on your router. Anything other than straight through will not achieve this. You could technically wire them up however and it wouldn't matter as long as both ends match, however the right thing to do is to follow standard, which in the US is typically B.
 
Meh. IMO A is the better standard as it allows dual phone lines if you ever use it for phones. (RJ14)

You can do that with B as well, it's just the pair colors aren't standard (orange and white should be the 2nd pair in telco wiring, but it's green and white if you use B); if you're going to use a jack for a phone though, you might want to put a rj25 jack, so you can use three lines (which seems like it might happen, once)
 
thanks for the info.

B
straight thru----as in wire both ends by std color codes?
 
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ran the cable and hooked up the jacks. plugged in a roku to test. It didn't smoke and worked fine.

So I must have done something right.

thanks for all the help
 
always do straight through on B standard...

if you need to crossover (which you probably don't) then use a crossover patch on one end...

most modern ports have auto crossover, and it's actually a part of the standard of gigabit nics...
 
Think of it this way, you want the jack in your den to be the same as on your router. Anything other than straight through will not achieve this. You could technically wire them up however and it wouldn't matter as long as both ends match, however the right thing to do is to follow standard, which in the US is typically B.

Actually it won't always work properly unless everything is wired exactly the same.

I was doing some CAT6 cables just straight through and not following the standard wiring. Even though the cables tested fine with my tester, when hooked up they would only give me 100Mbit max.

And this was just on the short cables going from the patch panel to the switch.

I cut off the ends and redid them to standard and they started working properly.

Also, mixing straight through A and B on the same run can cause problems as well as can using CAT5e and CAT6 on the same run.. say CAT6 from the switch to the wall plug and then a CAT5e patch cable... doesn't work most of the time. You will only get 100Mbit.

I had to redo a ton of patch cables because of this.
 
Actually it won't always work properly unless everything is wired exactly the same.

I was doing some CAT6 cables just straight through and not following the standard wiring. Even though the cables tested fine with my tester, when hooked up they would only give me 100Mbit max.

And this was just on the short cables going from the patch panel to the switch.

I cut off the ends and redid them to standard and they started working properly.

Also, mixing straight through A and B on the same run can cause problems as well as can using CAT5e and CAT6 on the same run.. say CAT6 from the switch to the wall plug and then a CAT5e patch cable... doesn't work most of the time. You will only get 100Mbit.

I had to redo a ton of patch cables because of this.

Even if you have an B-B patch connected to a A-A cable, connected to a B-B patch the electrical connections all line up, so mixing and matching should never be an issue as long as each segment is actually done correctly. Heck, even mixing and matching straights and crosses isn't really an issue anymore since most GigE devices have Auto MDI-X

A more likely issue with DIY Cat6 patch is not terminating to spec which can easily cause the cable to not negotiate 1G. It is very difficult to crimp Cat6 to spec. I stopped messing with it and just buy patch cables now if I want Cat6, or if I want to make a patch I'll use Cat5e.

The punch down terminations of solid core Cat6 are a lot less fussy and shouldn't be an issue for a DIY job.
 
Auto-MDI-X is part of the GigE spec, I thought. Other than that, ^ What he said! :D
 
I'd always go straight through for patches, you want both ends to match, if you need cross over then you use a crossover cable.
 
Even if you have an B-B patch connected to a A-A cable, connected to a B-B patch the electrical connections all line up, so mixing and matching should never be an issue as long as each segment is actually done correctly. Heck, even mixing and matching straights and crosses isn't really an issue anymore since most GigE devices have Auto MDI-X

A more likely issue with DIY Cat6 patch is not terminating to spec which can easily cause the cable to not negotiate 1G. It is very difficult to crimp Cat6 to spec. I stopped messing with it and just buy patch cables now if I want Cat6, or if I want to make a patch I'll use Cat5e.

The punch down terminations of solid core Cat6 are a lot less fussy and shouldn't be an issue for a DIY job.

I am using solid core Cat6.

I have made a hundreds( maybe a few thousand even as in the main building where I work I have at least a couple hundred custom patch cables) of patch cables and also run thousands upon thousands of cable in buildings.

The only times I have had issues is when mixing cat5/cat6 on the same run (even if they were all premade cables) and when trying an easier way to make straight through cat6 cables and then putting them in the same run as standard wired cables.

I have had to fix stuff that contractors have screwed up before... Oh yeah, let's leave 1"+ of wires without the jacket on the end of a cat5 cable instead of stripping the boot off the correct length.

Oh yeah, let's not punch down crap all the way so it doesn't work and then say we tested it to make sure it was ok.

Oh yeah, let's switch wires and then say it was punched down properly and tested ok.

And in buildings I have had to redo/add wiring, I have seen the same exact type of crap almost every single time.

And they wonder why they have connection issues.
 
I am using solid core Cat6.

I have made a hundreds( maybe a few thousand even as in the main building where I work I have at least a couple hundred custom patch cables) of patch cables and also run thousands upon thousands of cable in buildings.

The only times I have had issues is when mixing cat5/cat6 on the same run (even if they were all premade cables) and when trying an easier way to make straight through cat6 cables and then putting them in the same run as standard wired cables.

I have had to fix stuff that contractors have screwed up before... Oh yeah, let's leave 1"+ of wires without the jacket on the end of a cat5 cable instead of stripping the boot off the correct length.

Oh yeah, let's not punch down crap all the way so it doesn't work and then say we tested it to make sure it was ok.

Oh yeah, let's switch wires and then say it was punched down properly and tested ok.

And in buildings I have had to redo/add wiring, I have seen the same exact type of crap almost every single time.

And they wonder why they have connection issues.


Best one I've seen was cat5 cables stripped down to individual pairs running in bundles going to BIX panels, then to the patch panels. No idea why they did it that way, and I wish I could say it was for phones, but it was for network.
 
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