How to Connect Multiple CAT6 Ethernet Cables

[Why Not Indeed]

IMO sockets with punch-down connections are easier to use, because it's a lot easier to punch a cable in than crimp an RJ45 plug.

 

[SUNRAY]

IMO sockets with punch-down connections are easier to use, because it's a lot easier to punch a cable in than crimp an RJ45 plug.

To a novice I'd think that is true and there is the benefit of being able to correct errors.

Personally I find it quicker and easier to fit a plug (providing the wires are laid correctly in the cable) but I've been fitting them for decades.

 

[SimonH2]

Firstly, I'd second having a good think now about where you MIGHT want an outlet in the future. It's rather annoying to find you have them everywhere but where you currently need one. OK, don't go overboard as I used to recommend when fitting out offices - several times I've looked at a plan, marked with "X"s where I think they should put points, be over-ridden by the manager with something like "we will never need one there", and before they've finished moving in the desks they have a requirement where the manager refused to put an outlet. But definitely think about where you might need them and put in the cabling while you are doing any disruptive work.

Next. Yes, if only doing a few, quad plates are a good choice - it gets a bit messy by the time you have six of them on the wall though (client insisted it be done that way rather than a patch panel and small cabinet for that and the the switch etc.).

Be careful with termination. Cat 5e is quite forgiving, it takes skill to maintain a true Cat6 performance connection. Especially don't do what I;ve seen a few electricians do and untwist "several inches" of the cores .

Lastly, I think the battle on "RJ45" was lost years ago. Language is a living thing, even in places like France that have an official language rather than like in the UK where the dictionaries merely document what people are using. I suspect there are few (if any) installations still using an original RJ45 connection, so we might as well accept that it now means something different to what it did in the US half a century ago.

 

[mattylad]

IMO sockets with punch-down connections are easier to use, because it's a lot easier to punch a cable in than crimp an RJ45 plug.

I agree with this entirely, which is why I suggest adding face plates in the rooms.

Additionally, a premade cable can be added of the required length, then if the room gets re arranged at a later date - all that needs changing is the cable between the faceplate and the device.

And yes I will continue to call it an RJ45 plug, because that is what they are called and always will be - rollocks to your 8wotsit definition
Next we'll be discussing light bulbs and lamps

 

[SUNRAY]

I agree with this entirely, which is why I suggest adding face plates in the rooms.

Additionally, a premade cable can be added of the required length, then if the room gets re arranged at a later date - all that needs changing is the cable between the faceplate and the device.

And yes I will continue to call it an RJ45 plug, because that is what they are called and always will be - rollocks to your 8wotsit definition
Next we'll be discussing light bulbs and lamps

This is another situation where the correct definition of a term has been abused/corrupted.

Pictured below in a Registered Jack (RJ) 61. It is a lead constructed using two connectors and flat (not twisted pair) cable.
The connectors shown always have been and always will be; A1 modular plugs (later known as 8P8C modular plugs due to the frequent act of omitting contacts when not required).

I'm sure everyone on here would complain if they ordered a 13A extension lead and received one of these:

It is essentially the same as incorrectly using the term RJ45.

Fortunately I don't have the same issues as some others regarding the progressing corrupted use of our language as long as it doesn't result in confusion. For years 'Hoover' and more recently 'Henry' have been used without complication as an alternative to 'Vacuum cleaner', the same cannot be said for the terms 'Singer' or 'Gay'.

The use of RJ45 to describe the connector did create a lot of confusion 40to50 years ago, that far back I was in telecomms and as far as we were concerned the term exclusively referred to an assembly of the same style pictured above, plug would have been called 'Modular plug, 6 pin modular plug or 4 pin modular plug', however outside of the telecomms industry was a different matter and where the confusion came in.
Very recently a colleague asked if I had a spare RJ14, Instantly I knew exactly what he required and built one using 6P6C connectors (as I've never bothered buying 6P4C versions) and 4 core flat cable, equally if HE had asked for an RJ12 I'd have made the same thing but with 6 core flat cable, others asking for an RJ12 I'd have to ask whether they wanted a plug or a cable.


For what it's worth Last night I terminated 12 cat 5A's between 2 patchbays (actually a job I'd been promising to do for several weeks and promped to do so by this thread), one being punchdown t'other being 8P8C sockets. After I'd done the job I regretted not putting a stopwatch on it as I reckon I did 3 to 4 plugs in the time it took to zip tie the cable in place, fan out and punchdown 8 indivudual wires.

I would typically buy 8P modular plugs in bags of 500 (6P in 50's & 4P in 10's) I can't even begin to count how many that amounts to over the years. I'm sure a novice would find fitting plugs very fiddly (as I assume I did) compared to a punchdown socket (wich I now find more fiddly).
A clear demonstration of this was several years ago I was involved with fitting out a new village hall building, including DMX cables using Cat 5 cable. The person wiring in the 'dimmer cupboard' took maybe ½ hour and wasted 3 plugs without any success, as opposed to me doing all 5 plugs in way under 5 minutes, it was so quick he assumed I hadn't done them when I was climbing a ladder to plug the tester into the other end.

It really doesn't help when ignorant crap such as this site https://www.shiningltd.com/rj45-and-cat6-cables/ proliferated on the internet.

There is a brief rundown on some formats here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_jack although I think there may be some confusion regarding the history, I believe it was formulated by Bell in USA much earlier than the 70's that it seems to indicate.

 

[mattylad]

Sunray mate, your wrong, that's a 13a plug not an extension lead.
Your taking it to the extreme trying to call that an extension lead, there is no lead at all in your example.

Language changes, what things are called changes, the RJ45 plug has always been known as the RJ45 plug amongst the people, what salesmen or some standard decided to call it is irrelevant, the people know it as an RJ45, always did always will

Now stop being anal about it

 

[SUNRAY]

Sunray mate, your wrong, that's a 13a plug not an extension lead.
Your taking it to the extreme trying to call that an extension lead, there is no lead at all in your example.

Yes I posted a picture of a 13A plug but described an extension lead
Just as you are incorrecly using a description of a lead to refer to a plug, whatever corruption has taken place over the 50 years you are still using the wrong terms.

Language changes, what things are called changes, the RJ45 plug has always been known as the RJ45 plug amongst the people, what salesmen or some standard decided to call it is irrelevant, the people know it as an RJ45, always did always will

Now stop being anal about it

With respect, I'm not being anal, I'm actually saying something similar to you

This is another situation where the correct definition of a term has been abused/corrupted...
Fortunately I don't have the same issues as some others regarding the progressing corrupted use of our language as long as it doesn't result in confusion.

However the term RJ45 was not about the plug, it was the description of an assembly of plugs and cable (just the same as describing an extension lead) and 40 or 50 years ago nobody , no engineer, no fitter, no salesman within the telecomm or data environment would have dreamt of incorrectly calling an 8P8C modular plug a Registered Jack 45 (RJ45).
However without the 'industry' all sorts of different terms were incorrectly used, including 6P, 4P modular variants and these

being routinely called RJ45's.

Hence my

Fortunately I don't have the same issues as some others regarding the progressing corrupted use of our language as long as it doesn't result in confusion.

Which it far too regularly does unfortunately.

Oh and my parting shot: It was not I raised the point about incorrect terminology. Long ago I accepted the incorrect and confusing use of the RJ45 title and regularly use it myself when communicating with those who, like you (not an insult or derogatory comment), understand the usage, in just the same way as I'd use the term 'Hoover' or 'Henry' instead of vacuum cleaner or 'Fusebox' instead of Consumer Unit.

 

[robinbanks]

Early on in the thread it was stated that the destination needs to have power if using a switch to add more sockets at the destination room when one wire goes back to the router.

This is not necessarily the case. If there is a switch at the router end emitting Power over Ethernet, then a switch that is powered by PoE can be placed in the destination room

Running power over networking wires can easily and simply reduce the need for power supplies at the other end

Terminology, a "switch" in this post refers to an Ethernet switch, a device for passing traffic from several devices down one wire. It is not a switch like a light switch

 

[SimonH2]

FWIW for many years my preferred socket was the ITT Canon HD808 style. Crimped on in much the same way as an "RJ45" plug - and as Sunray says above, could be done qucker than it took to fasten the cable, unwind the pairs to the right places, and punch down 8 cores individually. Had the added advantage that you terminated the cable, then slotted the socket into the faceplate or patch panel which made things a LOT easier to work with (you could also remove individual sockets from the patch panel).
Unfortunately they didn't do a Cat6 version, and it now appears to have disappeared to the point where I can't find a reference/picture via Google.

As well as being easier to handle, such connection styles tend to give better signal characteristics - even more important with Cat6 since they are effectively into VHF radio frequency territory !

 

[SUNRAY]

FWIW for many years my preferred socket was the ITT Canon HD808 style. Crimped on in much the same way as an "RJ45" plug - and as Sunray says above, could be done qucker than it took to fasten the cable, unwind the pairs to the right places, and punch down 8 cores individually. Had the added advantage that you terminated the cable, then slotted the socket into the faceplate or patch panel which made things a LOT easier to work with (you could also remove individual sockets from the patch panel).

Not sure if it was the same brand one company I worked for used something following the same format and yes I liked them. They had a little black block which the wires were threaded into, then crimped onto the spikes before inserting into the outersleeve. So quick and easy despite sounding a lot of effort.

One issue that seemed to crop up was a select few places managed to dislodge them from the mounting, we even went back through the records to see who installed them but found no pattern at our end.

 

[SimonH2]

Sounds similar. The 898HD had a special tool :
Step 1, untwist wires, put through the 8 holes in the tool, wiggle a bit to remove the waviness and set them to the right soacing, trim to length.
Step 2, slot the wires into the slots in the connector block, fold down the flap, use the parrallel action jaws of the tool to press the wires into the contacts.
Step 3, slide the block into the sleeve, using a different bit of the tool.
Step 4, mount into faceplate or panel.

I used to mount the panel(s) in the rack, then as I dressed the cables I'd thread them through the holes in the panel. So they were all held till I'd finished dressing. Then I'd run a marker pen across before (one at a time) cutting off the excess, applying the final ident, stripping at the mark, and terminating.

The panel design changed a couple of times. First design had holders for 8 sockets, and 3 or 6 holders slotted into the panel. My preferred type was the next design - behind the face was a set of prongs like a picket fence that the sockets slotted onto. It was easy to add sockets to a partially populated panel.
The final design had a chassis with forward pointing prongs, then the front plate is added and both are held together by the mounting screws. They had a two deck version tgat did 48 ports in 1U - but you had to unplug everything to add more sockets.

By comparison, I hated punchdown panels - inferior in so many ways.

 

[SUNRAY]

Sounds similar. The 898HD had a special tool :
Step 1, untwist wires, put through the 8 holes in the tool, wiggle a bit to remove the waviness and set them to the right soacing, trim to length.
Step 2, slot the wires into the slots in the connector block, fold down the flap, use the parrallel action jaws of the tool to press the wires into the contacts.
Step 3, slide the block into the sleeve, using a different bit of the tool.
Step 4, mount into faceplate or panel.

That sounds too much like it to not be, the blocks of 8 too. although I don't recall fitting any in patchpanels myself.
If ever I didn't have the crimping tool I'd use a 4" G cramp, one day one of the managers saw me and nearly had a fit.