Cat5e home install

[skypilot]

So, today, I've run Cat5e to each major room in my house through the attic from a patch panel in the garage. The only problem is: None of the outlets work! Here is what I've done so far to diagnose the problem:

Switch in garage = Linksys Etherfast 4116

1) Plugged from living room wall plate to laptop, plugged from "living room" on patch panel to switch. No link shows up on laptop, Etherfast switch shows blinking green/yellow lights. This means something is happening, but it is not good.

2) Tried plugging from other rooms' wall plates to laptop and from their respective patch panel locations to switch. Same thing.

3) At this point, I thought it might be a faulty patch panel. So, I pulled the "living room" Cat5e end out of the rear of the patch panel and plugged it into a spare keystone RJ45 (from the same batch as the wall plates' keystones). I plugged the laptop back into the wall plate in the living room. At this point, I do not even get the blinking errors on the switch.

4) I am suspecting a bad batch of keystones.

Let me know what you think... My house is built on a slab, so everything is run in the attic (eletricity/water/heat/cable/cat3 telephone)... I am hoping that this is not just major interference problems... But I think the fact that using another keystone made the situation arguably worse may go against that thinking.

Also, if this makes a difference, the keystones are Cat6 rated, and the patch panel as well as all the attic wiring are Cat5e rated.

 

[amdskip]

Are you sure you have all of your wiring standards correct? Have you wired up things before or is this your first try?

 

[RebateMonger]

Use a short CAT5 cable between some Keystone Jacks for your initial testing. If you become convinced you've got bad Jacks, then buy a couple of others (of a different brand) at the local hardware store. I also recommend using only factory-built patch cables (not homemade).

 

[bruceb]

First thing to do is check how the Etherfast Switch is connected to your Router
On some routers, there is a Specific Port that Must be used to Uplink into a Switch
If you are not using that port on the router to feed the switch it will not work.

Try bringing the laptop into the room where the Switch is at ... plug into any of
the outputs .. Does it work ? ? If so, the cables are either miswired or not
fully punched down or the ends are not installed / crimped properly.

If it does not work, check what I first said about the switch wiring to the router

 

[spidey07]

You can't mix and match cat6 jacks with cat5e cable. The wiring is a different gauge. Use cat5e jacks/patch panel, or re-run the cable with CAT6.

Also make sure you wired it to 568b standard.

 

[skypilot]

Spidey - Thanks! I'll be purchasing cat5e jacks in a couple of minutes, I'll let you know how it turns out. Everything is wired to the 568b standard.

Bruceb - The router does not matter, in this case. The switch is not even showing good physical / data link layer connections. The switch works on all ports with computers in the same room.

RebateMonger - Good idea. Perhaps I'll try that before buying cat5e jacks, although I think Spidey07 knows what he's talking about in this case.

Amdskip - I've wired before, but it was some time ago. I'm fairly sure I did all the terminations correctly (besides using inconsistent jacks/cable).

 

[yuppiejr]

Starting with the basics - did you run one of the cheapie 8 pin testers end-to-end via known good patch cables through all of your connections to make sure you haven't got mispunched jacks or damaged cable anywhere?

 

[skypilot]

Originally posted by: spidey07
You can't mix and match cat6 jacks with cat5e cable. The wiring is a different gauge. Use cat5e jacks/patch panel, or re-run the cable with CAT6.

Also make sure you wired it to 568b standard.

I rewired with cat5e jacks, as opposed to cat6 jacks, and everything works. Thanks, Spidey.

You know what they say about assumptions.

 

[spidey07]

Same thing they say about spidey-isms.

"Don't fvck with the physical layer."

 

[skypilot]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Same thing they say about spidey-isms.

"Don't fvck with the physical layer."

The ironic thing is... I deal with physical layer optical stuff for 10GbE and OC192 all day long... What a stupid mistake

 

[spidey07]

So you essentially mixed 50 and 62.5 mircon fiber in your home and expected it to work?

Good job!
:thumbsup:

 

[cmetz]

spidey07, I don't have the EIA spec in front of me, but my understanding is that cat6 allows 22ga to 24ga. cat5e might allow the same but in practice I've always seen 24ga. cat6 I've seen 23ga and 24ga, but I think these days it's mostly or even all 24ga(?). The 23ga was basically a kluge until they figured out how to make better wire.

I've terminated generic cat5e into Ortronics Clarity6 TrackJacks and it works great (though expensive/a waste of $$).

The difference between 23ga and 24ga is pretty subtle. I would expect a well designed 110 jack to be capable of accepting either and delivering 5e level performance. I think the 50 vs. 62.5 metaphor is not really appropriate here, it's just not that big of a difference and shouldn't cause as much harm.

There are a lot of problems that which chopping and re-terminating with new jacks could fix. OP did that and is fixed, we might never know exactly which problem he was having.

 

[skypilot]

Originally posted by: cmetz
spidey07, I don't have the EIA spec in front of me, but my understanding is that cat6 allows 22ga to 24ga. cat5e might allow the same but in practice I've always seen 24ga. cat6 I've seen 23ga and 24ga, but I think these days it's mostly or even all 24ga(?). The 23ga was basically a kluge until they figured out how to make better wire.

I've terminated generic cat5e into Ortronics Clarity6 TrackJacks and it works great (though expensive/a waste of $$).

The difference between 23ga and 24ga is pretty subtle. I would expect a well designed 110 jack to be capable of accepting either and delivering 5e level performance. I think the 50 vs. 62.5 metaphor is not really appropriate here, it's just not that big of a difference and shouldn't cause as much harm.

There are a lot of problems that which chopping and re-terminating with new jacks could fix. OP did that and is fixed, we might never know exactly which problem he was having.

I re-terminated the Cat6 jacks 3-4 times at the end of each run before resorting to purchasing Cat5e jacks... Which worked in all rooms the first time. So, without getting too worried about the precision of the 50/62.5 metaphor, Spidey was correct. Cat6 jacks are built to terminate Cat6 cable, and Cat5e jacks Cat5e cable.

 

[cmetz]

skypilot, I am posting this from a 1000BaseT connection with Clarity6 cat6 jacks on each end of a cat5e cable. Claims that such a combination won't work might be a bit bold.

Your jacks and your cable might not work. But this combination can work fine, and usually does.

 

[skypilot]

Originally posted by: cmetz
skypilot, I am posting this from a 1000BaseT connection with Clarity6 cat6 jacks on each end of a cat5e cable. Claims that such a combination won't work might be a bit bold.

Your jacks and your cable might not work. But this combination can work fine, and usually does.

I didn't mean to say that such a combination would _never_ work, just that this was obviously the problem in my case.