Anybody use boots when you assemble your own cat5 cable?

[TechnoPro]

Justy curious if they are beneficial or not. I can see how they protect the retaining clip, but do they serve any other purpose?

I mean something like this.

 

[zetter]

Yeah, they make it harder to get the cable back out of the NIC when you want to remove it as you have to push on the rubber boot which then pushes on the clip and is often harder than if it was just the bare clip.

I suppose you could use them to designate different purposes with different colored ones (or just use different colored UTP cable like I do).

 

[Boscoh]

The only real use I've found for them is that they prevent the clip from getting snagged/broken off if you're pulling the cable out of a big pile of other cables. Other than that, they just get in the way and block LED's on some devices.

If I dont leave them off cables I make, I put them on but pull them back off the connector so they're hanging on the cable. This way if I need to pull the cable out, I can always slide the boot up so the clip wont break off while I'm pulling the cable out.

 

[cmetz]

Those kinds of boots are, IMO, evil. I've had to spend a lot of time snipping them off of cables because they often interfere with high-density connections (switches) or other clearance. If you really want boots, get manufactured cables with built-in mini boots. For hand-made cables, you crimped it once, if the tab breaks you can crimp it again.

Here's what I used to buy a lot of, back when Newegg was cheap:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=12-117-204&depa=5

 

[spyordie007]

I dont use them on most of the cables that I make that I know are going to be stationary (servers, switches and desktops). I do use them for places where I know they are going to be plugged-unplugged frequently and moved around a lot (like laptops) because it's annoying to always have the little plastic clips broken off and our users coming to us weekly looking for yet another cap to their cable.

 

[spidey07]

nah, you can buy good booted cables for a few bucks....sure beats making them.

 

[Cheetah8799]

I've made a LOT of cables in the past and never used boots. Their primary purpose is to avoid snags when pulling them I believe. I usually pull them back and leave them away from the end though.

I agree with cmetz, if you can make your own cables you can easily repair the ends if you break them.