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Buying
pre-crimped, ready-made cable for a home or office can be quite
expensive, and hiring somebody to do the wiring will cost even
more. For those of us who are on a budget (and who isn't?),
there is a simple way to make your own networking cable. Requiring
a little skill, and a few inexpensive tools you can be making
your own cable in no time. Keep in mind that I'm talking about
places that need over 100+ feet of cable, there's no sense in
making just a few feet of cable and going out and buying all
of these tools.
What
you will need
- Category
5 network cable
- Category
5 RJ-45 connectors
- RJ-45
Crimping Device
- RJ-45
Loop Back Tester (optional)
Category
5 network cable
This cable can be bought from many different places in spindles
ranging from 50-5000 feet depending on the job you are doing.
At a local Radioshack one can buy a spindle of 100 feet for
just about $25, you'll pay a little more than that ($30-$40)
for 50 feet already crimped, so why not do it yourself to get
the exact size you want?
Keep in mind that there are a number of different types of cable
one can use for networking. The most common for an Ethernet
network (what you'll most likely use) is cat5 cable. There are
a number of different specifications of cables out there as
well as classified by the Electronics Industry Association (EIA),
take note:
CAT
1&2: Less than 10mbps (classic telephone wire)
CAT 3: Data speeds of up to 16 mbps
CAT 4: Data speeds of up to 20 mbps
CAT 5: Data speeds of up to 100 mbps (what you should use)
CAT 5 Enhanced: Data speeds of up to 200 mbps
CAT 6: Data speeds of up to 600 mbps
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