[NMLUG] e-net distance

[nmlug@swcp.com (Warner Losh)]

In message <01C0342A.52B77740@wrk101.rgtravel.com> Ed Heron writes:
:   I've gotten very poor results making my own patch cords.  I've discussed 
: it with my communication vendors and they have only slightly better rates 
: of success.  If you've got good technique I'd like to learn it.  I usually 
: just get a couple of inserts and make a female-female extender and use 2 
: shorter patch cords.  Is this an acceptable topic at a meeting in the 
: spirit of do it yourself computer stuff?

At work we make our own cables from time to time.  We prefer to buy
them, but they have long lead times sometimes (due to internal
ordering proceedures for the vendor we get them from).  So we wind up
making some from time to time.  We've found that to have good success,
you must use a good crimp tool, you must check the crimp has been done
right (all the little copper cores but up against the end of the RJ-45
connector), you gotta check your color codes 4-5 times, you gotta use
our cheapo cable continuity tester and you gotta test it with a large
FTP on a box that we have that we can swap cables on.  Usually one you
get past the continuity tester, things always work.

The crimping tool ran about $200, but it has been worth it.  The old
crimping tool that we had was $50 and didn't alway crimp the middle
pins down properly.  That was a nightmare because sometimes it could
be made to work, but you never knew when or why.

We've never had a problem with connectors, but we always buy the ones
rated for cat5 as far as I know.

Don't know if you could fill an entire meeting about this stuff,
however.  It is the sort of thing that once you've done 10-20 of them
it becomes a lot easier to get it right for the next one :-)

Warner
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