Making network patch cables...

[Blackcrow64]

So... I'm not sure how many networking/computer guys we have in here but thought it might be worth a shot posting here...

So my story starts out like this. I ran 100' of cat6 cabling from the basement to the attic and across the house and down into a wall to widen my wifi coverage to a new access point... I had just bought a premade cable and had it ghetto rigged through a hole in the wall and up to the access point...

I finally decided that I needed to install a wall plate and correctly do this... Well I didn't really know the technical aspect of cutting the cable and putting it into a wall plate connector so I started looking around online to do a little extra learning... (Didn't wanna screw up 100' of cable.) I quickly found that there are two ways to wire it up. t568a and t568b... However, I didn't know which was more standard in 2010 since the articles I found were all like 2000-2005... I thought maybe a or b had become the worldwide standard by now.

So I guess mainly what I'm looking for is opinions of what you guys may have used or have seen used... I ended up doing the t568b connection and I tested it and it seems to be working but didn't know if some aspect of it will come back to bite me later on...

Another thing I was worried about was whether or not one was better for gigabit connections...

I guess that's about it. I'm just excited to know how to do this correctly so I can add some wall plates to a few other rooms on the other side of the house rather than my ghetto rigged holes I put in the walls. lol...

[ericn1300]

B is pretty much the standard around here but it really doesn't matter as long as both ends are the same. Double check your colors, and check for ringed wire from removing the insulation. I slide the insulation down rather than stripping it off to avoid ringing the wires.

[lixar420]

Used to work at b.c wireless and we always used t568b aka orange-stripe, orange, green-stripe, blue, blue-stripe, green, brown-stripe, brown,

Im not sure but i believe t568a is also known as a crossover cable so it can go from computer to computer without a router. Not sure on that one tho may be way off.

[Blackcrow64]

Well the only difference I can really see is that you switch your green and orange between the two which as ericn1300 said, it doesn't really matter as long as both ends are the same... Seems kind of dumb for them to create two different standards that don't change anything. Just confuses people like me who look into things too much. lol...

For the crossover cable, it swaps the blue and brown pairs from what I understand...

I'm actually really excited that I can clean up my network appearance now by adding wallplates to areas that need it... I'm such a geek... lol

[ericn1300]

The reason for the difference is that each pair of wires in cat-5 are wound at a different rate per inch, Cat-5 means that the comm pair is wound 5 times per inch. Over a 100 foot length each pair is a different length so that signals travel at a different speed on each pair.

[Gohan Ryu]

T568A provides backward compatibility to both one pair and two pair USOC wiring schemes. The T568B standard matches the older AT&T 258A color code that was the most widely used wiring scheme.

Has nothing to do with the length of the wires.

[ericn1300]

But don't forget that RJ-45 was a telephony standard too that has nothing to do with patch cables or networking. RJ-45 standards call for an eight position, eight conductor jack wired on positions 4 and 5 only, tip one and ring one respectively.

The variance in pair length difference and the resulting speed difference was introduced to minimize crosstalk when more than one pair was in use beginning in cat-3 versus the old 4 conductor telephone wire. Data networking uses 2 pairs.

To minimize far end crosstalk you should always use a patch cable of at least 3 meters, even when the devices are inches apart on the rack, or the difference in pair lengths by winds will be reduced incrementally by the length of the cable.

[Gohan Ryu]

Originally Posted by ericn1300

But don't forget that RJ-45 was a telephony standard too that has nothing to do with patch cables or networking. RJ-45 standards call for an eight position, eight conductor jack wired on positions 4 and 5 only, tip one and ring one respectively.

The variance in pair length difference and the resulting speed difference was introduced to minimize crosstalk when more than one pair was in use beginning in cat-3 versus the old 4 conductor telephone wire. Data networking uses 2 pairs.

To minimize far end crosstalk you should always use a patch cable of at least 3 meters, even when the devices are inches apart on the rack, or the difference in pair lengths by winds will be reduced incrementally by the length of the cable.

Right, but none of this has anything to do with the t568a and t568b standards, which only specify color codes for correct pin placement.