A couple of home networking questions

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m putting this in IMHO, because I don’t think I’m looking for “factual” answers. More like experiences and…well…opinions.

I’ve got a wireless network in my house, based around Comcast’s cable service and an Apple Airport Extreme router. Due to, I guess, some peculiarities in the construction of my home, I do not get a very strong signal in the living room, where I have a Blu-ray player on which I like to watch Netflix movies. It’s not hideously weak, but I do get interruptions from time to time. I’m thinking that connecting the Blu-ray to the network via Cat5 would be ideal. I think there is Cat5 running through the walls in all of the rooms involved. I’m going to stop by the hardware store and get a tone and probe kit to see if I can trace them out.

So, on to the questions. Firstly, how difficult/tricky is it to install the various connectors on the end of Cat5 cable? I’ve read a few online tutorials, and it looks pretty straightforward with the right tools, but I’ve never done it before. So, any helpful hints, cautions, or other advice would be welcome.

If, in fact, there is not Cat5 running to where I want it, I’m pretty sure I will find either phone cord or coaxial cable. What are the odds that I could use one of these to pull Cat5 through the walls. I’m envisioning finding the ends of the cable, taping the Cat5 to it, and pulling from the other end. Obviously you don’t know the construction details of my house, so I guess what I’m asking is - is it commonplace to staple or otherwise fix such cables periodically along their runs, or do I stand a reasonable chance of getting away with my scheme? The place is only about three years old, for what it’s worth. On the other hand, there are so many goofy things in the construction of the place, that I suppose I can’t count on anything being “normal” around here.

Thanks for any help you wish to offer.

2

You might want to use a repeater to boost a weak wireless signal. Also, it might be sufficient to simply move the router to a more central location in the house. What I do is I used to have a 40’ network cable before I had a wireless router, and connected my wife’s computer to it. Now that my wife’s computer and my router are wireless, that 40’ cable allows me to move the router just about anywhere in the house.

3

It’s not difficult, just tedious. It had been at least a decade since I had to put ends on cat5 cable, but just last month I agreed to help someone at work out and do about 5 extension cables (that is, male on one end and female on the other).

  • Most importantly, pay attention to the color coding. Pick one of the standard orderings (I saw two referenced) and stick with it. Oh, and make sure you’re not making cross-over cables unless you want them (you don’t for what you’ve described).

  • Second most important tip (IMHO): after ordering the wires in the correct color order (usually sort of fanned out), you can put the flat fan of wires between your thumb and finger, then bend them back-and-forth and side-to-side. After doing so a few times, the wires will stay together straight (not fanned) and lay (mostly) flat. Makes it quite easy to put them into the end.

  • Related to the above, although my office mate didn’t mention it until after I had finished: cut the wires – from 1 to 8, or 8 to 1 – on an angle, say of 10 degrees. Supposedly, it makes putting the wires into the end easier. I don’t know if that’s true or not; the bending mentioned just above did a fine job for me, so I wouldn’t have needed it even if I had known.

  • Most crimping tools I’ve seen have a wire stripper built into the handle. Never works for me as advertised…I always end up cutting into at least one wire (it’s just not like stripping co-ax cable). I (re)discovered that what works for me is to only lightly close the blade on the wire, then spin/twist the wire while pressing it into the blade to cut through the outer casing. Yes, I get some ugly cuts, but they end up out of sight in the end anyway.

That’s all I can think of right now. Really, it’s not difficult (and please excuse what may be overly basic items above – better to mention the elementary stuff just to make it explicit than assume it’ll be obvious). If anything above was unclear, ask away and I’ll try to clarify…

4

The crimpers I’ve used do not require that the wiring be stripped.
They are easy to make, but I’ve had lots and lots of practice. :slight_smile:
Do use a standard ordering, like the man said. Straight through doesn’t work well after 24’ or so.

5

you need the terminations to match your cable type solid or stranded.

cable should be stapled when not installed in conduit. even if not stapled (when not in conduit) you won’t be able to pull over much distance without damaging the cable.

6

I’m surprised no ones mentioned that device that uses the AC adapters. Not that I’ve used it, but every thread I’ve seen seems to recommend it rather than putting in new wire.

7

Haven’t put ends on Cat5 in years, but I still remember the order. Look at the top of the connector, open end pointing down. The pins from left to right are numbers 1 to 8.

Your cable will have four pairs of wires. Each pair should consist of a white wire with a colored stripe, and a solid color wire (the solid wire will probably have a white stripe as well). Here’s the order as I learned it:

1 - white/orange
2 - orange
3 - white/green
4 - blue
5 - white/blue
6 - green
7 - white/brown
8 - brown

When you have them lined up, you’ll have a nice pretty white/solid/white/solid alternating pattern going.

I can tell you my technique for the crimp, but it takes a little practice to make it easy. First, I’d strip about an inch and a half of the outer insulation away to give me room to work. Untwist the pairs, and line them up as above in your left hand, using your left thumbnail to hold them snugly in order. The flexing technique mentioned by Digital Stimulus is a big help in keeping things straight. When you have them all lined up, grab your wire cutter and snip the excess of the wires to leave a nice, flat, even end; that way each wire will fit all the way to the end of the connector. You only want about 1.5 cm of the twisted pair wire to be showing beyond the outer insulation, for a reason I’ll give later.

Then comes the part that takes the most practice. Take the connector in your right hand and, still holding the wires tight and even with your thumbnail, press the wires into place on the bottom of the inside of the connector and slide them forward. If you’ve done it right, each wire will find its proper channel and slide in evenly, all the way to the front. Before you crimp, take a good look, and make sure the wires are in all the way and in their proper place; if not, pull it out and try again, restripping and cutting if you have to.

If everything looks good, put the connector in your crimper, give the wire a little forward push in case it slipped a little, and give a good squeeze. Take it out and check that the “teeth” from the pins have been pushed all the way into the wires; you can see them through the sides of the connectors. Remember how I said earlier that you wanted to trim the wires down to about 1.5 cm? If you got the length just right, the outer insulation will be held fast inside the connector by a rectangular bit of plastic behind the pins, which gets crimped down at the same time as the pins. That’ll take strain off the metal pins if the cable gets pulled. If you didn’t get enough of the insulation in there to get crimped, your cable will still work just fine, but it may not stand up to rough handling as well as one that’s crimped properly.

8

Something else I thought of, and I’m kinda hoping someone can explain these things: the package of ends I was using had these small plastic wire holders, 8 offset holes in a rectangular piece that fit into the end prior to crimping. I know that’s a bad description, so here’s a diagram:



+-----------------+
| o   o   o   o   |
|   o   o   o   o |
+-----------------+

Not sure what their exact purpose was – I’m guessing either to make it easier to get the wires in the end, line the wires up with their contacts, or maintain some space between wires. Whatever…I gave up trying to use them after a minute or two. So here’s my advice – unless there’s a tool to thread the wires into the holes, my determination was that they were just a huge PITA and to be avoided.

I also wanted to say that you should think seriously about just buying some pre-made cables. Unless you already own a crimper, the cost of a pre-made cable or two will still be less than the tool. And if you’re gonna be making more than that, you have to weigh the time spent (when you could be doing something else) versus the dollar cost savings. Not to mention the aggravation involved if one of the cables you make doesn’t work. While I appreciate the DIY mentality – besides which, I’m a cheap bastard – I just thought I’d throw that out there…

9

carlb - I recently ran a 75ft length of cat6 through my crawlspace. From the brief bit of research I did, I’d recommend upgrading. Even if you don’t plan on getting gigabit ethernet in your home anytime soon, it’s not that far into the future. Plus, the cable is backwards compatible (is that term appropriate? - I’m not a huge computer guy), so you’re not losing anything more than a few bucks for the upgrade.

10

Thanks for the answers everyone.

For various reasons, I think I need to keep the router in the home office, which is, unfortunately, almost as far from the living room as one can get. I have an Apple Airport Express that I’ve been trying to use as a repeater, but I can’t seem to find a good location where the Express seems to receive a practically full-strength signal and can broadcast effectively to the Blu-ray player. I’m still playing around with it, though. Maybe I’ll find a magical sweet spot.

I thought that might be the case. I’m seriously hoping the cable I need will already be in the wall.

As for the crimping, I realize I was thinking of the wrong connections. Assuming that the cable I want is already in the walls I want it to be in, I’d actually be installing “female” connectors in the walls, not male ends on cables (I’ve got so many patch cords hanging around the house it’s not funny). So, I guess that besides the wall plates and female connectors I need to get a punch down tool. Are these connections any more difficult to make than the crimped connections on the male connectors?

11

Easier. In a pinch I’ve done it with a metal strip on my keychain. =)