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Richard Smith
I stole Mindphucks Donkey
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| this how-to is for anyone who has ever gone to a lan without a network cable, or who is organising a lan and wants to ensure that everybody can get connected quickly and easily.
items required
· cat5 cable
· rj45 connectors
· rj45 crimping tool
· network cable tester
you will need to cut your cable to the required length. be careful and measure accurately - you would hate to find out after trimming the cable, that you end up two feet short. on the other hand you don't want to use a fifty foot cable to connect two computers ten feet apart. ethernet does not like coiled up excess cable. consider making the cable with enough slack to allow access to the back of the computer without needing to unplug the cable.
cat5 cable is generally available in rolls of 1000ft or 305 metres for those metrically inclined
rj45 cable connectors are also necessary - two per cable. these can be expensive if you are making up a lot of cables, but generally they are available in major computer shops in packs of 10. to prepare the ends of the cables for the rj45 connector, i don't use measurements for stripping the cable end, i start by stripping at least 2 inches of the main cable insulation and then carefully separate the eight internal wires. then you need to arrange the cables in the correct sequence depending on whether it is a straight through cable, or a cross over cable.
then you need to trim the eight cables back to about 1.5 cm from the insulation. just make sure that each wire is equal length and that when you push the cables into the connector, the connector cable lock pinches the main cable insulation.
you now need to insert the connector into your rj45 crimping tool – and press hard.
note: make sure all wires are pushed completely into the connector before seating the connector cable lock.
there are generally two types of cat5 cable that you may have to make up. they are “straight through” and “crossover”. straight through cables are for connecting a pc to a hub or a switch. crossover cables are for connecting a pc directly to another pc, or a hub directly to another hub, or switch. the wiring is a little different for each type, so i have shown some diagrams below to illustrate the differences.
as you can see, for a straight through cable, the conductors are arranged in the sequence greenwhite, green, orangewhite, blue, bluewhite, orange, brownwhite, brown for both ends. in a crossover cable, only one end is wired in this fashion, while the other end uses the sequence orangewhite,orange, greenwhite, blue, bluewhite, green, brownwhite, brownto finish the job properly, you will really need to get a cat5 cable tester. by plugging your newly made cable into this device, it will tell you if your cable is good or bad, and whether it is a crossover or straight through cable. some models will even tell you which connections are open or shorted if there is a problem.that's it, if everything went well you now have an ethernet utp category 5 cable.
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how to make a network cable