Does anyone know how one would go about putting together CAT-5 Cable and the Connectors that go to the NIC? What tool do you need, and where can I get it?
I don’t know exactly what you need [guess: cable, the two ends, the know-how, and pliers]. You can probably get what you need at a RadioShack or a MicroCenter
Here’s a DIY instruction page: http://www.duxcw.com/digest/Howto/network/cable/cable7.htm
Ah, thank you. I was under the impression that one needed a special tool, or something more than hands, at least. This will prove quite helpful. Thanks again.
If you’ll want to make your own cables, you need three main things:
- The cable (you can buy a 500ft spool of it at Home Depot - more than enough to last you a few years)
- RJ45 connector - these are the plugs - only 3 cents each (75 cents a piece if you go to radio shack)
- A crimp/punch-down tool - this allows you to actually attach the RJ45 plugs to the wire. It works by pushing down the copper contacts on the RJ45 plug till they dig into the wires and lock in place. A very basic one costs around 10, 15 bucks.
Optional, but highly recommended: A cable tester. CAT5 is a pain in the $@#$@#$@# to make by hand. It’s difficult the first time, and you’re going to make mistakes whether you want to believe it or not. It’ll save you lots of troubleshooting time if you buy yourself a cable tester. Expensive ones that test for signal-noise ratio, max frequency, data loss, etc. cost $2000 and up. Luckily, you could care less about these things unless your setting up a very large corporate network. The most basic cable testers cost around $25, and they’re more than good enough for testing if a wire is good or bad. Again, I’d highly recommend one (or atleast borrowing one from your school/friend) because you ARE going to make mistakes your first few times.
*Originally posted by SuperDanman *
**Again, I’d highly recommend it (or atleast borrowing one from your school/friend) because you ARE going to make mistakes your first few times. **
As I can attest… I wired my house, and had to redo several of the drops because they were messed up. A tester would’ve been a lifesaver. It’s a real pain to use a multimeter and test each pin one at a time…
*Originally posted by Jeff Waegelin *
**It’s a real pain to use a multimeter and test each pin one at a time… **
Especially when you just found out that the cable you ran from the basement to the second storey was faulty…
I actually did have a tester, though, so I can’t complain too much.
*Originally posted by FotoPlasma *
**Especially when you just found out that the cable you ran from the basement to the second storey was faulty…
**
That’s exactly what happened to me. The cable from the basement to my room had been drilled through at one point when the builders were working on the drywall, but it was far enough back that I couldn’t see the damage. After numerous attempts to fix the ends, I decided to use the old cable to feed the new one through, and discovered substantial damage to the cable.
500 ft lasting a few years?
I guess it will if you are just making patch cables, but we ran Cat-5 from every room to the basement, and replaced the ikky phone line cabling with Cat-5. The remainder of the second 1000 ft box is about 120ft, and is now just a real long cable that we use when we have Halo parties.
Wetzel
technically cabling above 100ft is considered too long and have too much of a signal-to-noise ratio for it to be used without a repeater. Who’s counting though? 
On the other hand, I have about a 90-foot cable connecting one room in my house to another… with one network card it couldn’t connect, but when I put in another, it worked fine (both tested fine on other cables).
Can I test the cables without a cable tester by just replacing the CAT 5 with another CAT 5 that I know works, like the connection between my NIC and my wall, and see if it works fine?
Thats the quick-and-dirty test… it’ll work, but only partially. If you miswire, you may or may not damage your networking gear (I honestly have no idea if there are saftey devices built in, but putting the wrong wires in the wrong places can never be good). You may have a bad contact - this’ll work some times but not other times, the result being decreased speeds due to more errors.
Put simply, this approach might work, but depending on the problem, you might get misleading results. If you wanna get into this stuff, just dish out the 25 bucks and be sure. It has the added benefit that when your friends start to do this stuff, you can hold out your tester in a beam of light from the window and they’ll bow down to you and call you g - er, my dreamworld has krept into my thoughts again. Grar.
it’s funny, cause dan’s having dreams of us actually listening to him for once… 
seriously though, if you do want to make your own cables, you need the right tools, or years of your time to screw up with. if you just need one cable, go buy it, over priced, from some electronics store. if you need more than one, then learn how to make them, and try not to waste too much cable / RJ-45 connectors.
and just incase there’s any doubt, both me and superdanman are halfway to our CCNA’s (Cisco Certified Networking Associate) which means we know way more than we should about computer networking :).