Thread: Making Network Cables

I know where you are coming from, price wise. We went down that path ourselves at work, had about 50 cables that we needed, so made them ourselves.

Most have been replaced with commercial ones since, we had all sorts of problems with them once they were about 18-24 months old.

Never did get to the bottom of the problem, but once they were replaced, problems disappeared.

You can make your own patch cables and so on, but unless you are doing bulk quantities, the cost of the pliers and small quantities of jacks kills any price advantage over a supplier like 4cabling.

It's illegal to do your own network wiring without an ACMA (or whatever) cabling licence (which basically means you know enough to keep the wire away from mains cable).

Geoff's problem may have been incorrect jacks - you need the correct jack type for solid or stranded cable.

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

Geoff's problem may have been incorrect jacks - you need the correct jack type for solid or stranded cable.

As far as we know, all the jacks and cables were fine. They worked for about 18-24 months and then things started to slow considerably. Data was starting to scramble, files not saving properly, general mayhem.

After replacing cables , problem went away and hasn't returned.

You can make you own network cables, you are supposed to have a cablers licence to install network cable on a commerciale basis, nothing to stop you doing your own at home.

Most people come unstuck making their own fly leads for 2 reasons.

1. Crappy crimping tool, mine cost $300 in about 1991 & is still going strong.

2. Wrong cable used.
The network cable (Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6) that you buy in a big roll is mostly single stranded IE: there are 8 wires in the whole cable & each one of them is solid copper with an insulating sheath.
This is fine for building wire 'cos once it is installed, it doesn't move.
It is no good for fly leads because the wires 'work harden' with movement & eventually break or 'disconnect' from the little gold jaws on the terminal in the plug.
The correct cable for fly leads is multi-stranded & it is a HEAP more exxy than the single stranded building wire.

One more thing worth noting is that you can pay a bit more for the blank RJ45 plugs & get ones that have 3 teeth on the gold terminal to bite into the copper wire.
The cheap ones only have 2 teeth & are not as reliable.

I have gotten pretty quick at stomping RJ45 crimps onto the end of cable but I still can't make them as cheap as what the Chinese do, I rarely even make a fly lead any more.

I made my own network cables due to very long runs and pulling pre-made cables through cavities is a bit hard. It takes a fair bit of time and patience and some good tools to do it right but mine have been in for about six years with no issues. Be aware that the higher speed gigabyte cable requires different plugs as it is slightly thicker, or so I am told, as I am about to re do mine in Gigabyte with suitable upgrades for all the attached equipment.

I wouldn't think it would be practical to make a one off or couple of cables. It isn't illegal to make your own in Qld but to install them commercially would need to be licensed.

Bought a kit at Aldi a couple years ago, on special from memory it was about $20.00. Came with a heap of cable, plugs and a good set of crimping pliers. After numerous attempts and many plugs later I could not get a cable to work so I searched the net for the colour coding of the plugs. Turned out the instructions that came with the kit had incorrect wiring diagrams. Emailed the maker or distributor and told them what had happened, they in turn sent me another packet of plugs and have not had a problem since.