TR Forums

is it hard to take a 1,000 ft roll of cat6 and make it work for a 10/100/1000 network? I hear I'll need a crimper, but would it be hard? I want to save money wile running wire around my house, and buying 1,000 ft and jacks are cheaper than 3 100ft cables

It's not that hard, we used to do it in computer class all the time. You just need to get a crimper and a diagram that shows you the position of all the wires. If you don't line them up properly, the cable will not work. A tester would also be nice if you want to know if you set it up properly before you go to plug it in.

Getting the things lined up and at proper length is the tricky part, but not especially hard when you have done a few, and when doing jacks, remember to not untwist too far, or it probably wont meet anything over the spec for 100Mbit. And yeah, get a nice cable tester, one of those $50 things with one part removable for setting in one end, then just crimp a pair of 15cm runs so you can plug it in. The ones that actually try which speed something can handle is usually way too expensive for something like that.