Why am I getting poor to no signal from CAT6 run?

[atgcpaul]

I recently wired my living room for CAT6. My router is in the office. A 6'
cable runs to a keystone jack wall plate. Then the signal is picked up by a
50' cable that runs to another kestone jack wall plate in the living room.
Finally, another 6' cable connects to a laptop/Bluray/etc.

Not a really long run but when I connect my laptop, I can see that's it trying
to resolve an IP address but then fails. It just repeats this over and over.

I'm wondering if the connections in the keystones are loose. Any ideas?

[dbhost]

A common mistake is to punch down the opposing ends to different standards. (T568A VS. T568B) where the wires don't pass straight through. I am a bit rusty on this, but I believe that on 10BaseT as long as the middle wires were straight through, the sides didn't matter, but with fast ethernet, and Gigabit ethernet over copper, it makes all the difference in the world...

Check that your punch downs are the same standard on all ends, and make sure that the wires and fully punched down. Sometimes you can punch a wire down and not cut through the jacket, so the conductor isn't making contact...

[atgcpaul]

I didn't make my own cables. All the cables already had the connectors on
them. There is a possibility that one or both cables on each end (not the
50' in the middle) is not CAT6 but CAT5 or CAT5E. Would that cause my
problems?

I'm going to try connecting the laptop and router directly to the long cable
with nothing in between. If that passes, then I know the router can push a
signal that far away and that my long cable is good. Then I can start adding
the other cables back in and seeing where the failure is.

[LCHIEN]

as Dave said, it only takes one wire of one of those connectors to be made defectively and it will go to heck in a handbasket. you have a total of 6 connectors each of which have 8 wires made up... 48 wire connections to be made perfectly. Start replacing wires and isolate.

Being Cat 5e vs Cat 6 or mixed probably won't make a whole lot of difference for even a 1 GB ethernet.

[atgcpaul]

Very strange. It is the keystone jack in the office. With the cables plugged
into it in the normal orientation, no connection. However, if I flip the jack
around and connect the same wires, I've got network. Of course, the jack
only works in the wall plate in one orientation.

Anyway, I'm going to try swapping the jacks and see if that still works so I
don't have to go buy another jack.

Thanks for the ideas

[LCHIEN]

look closely at the connectors, they have little gold wire-like fingers that mate against the RJ45 connectors. Probably one of the fingers is bent out of position and might be able to be straightened up so its parallel to the others.

[dbhost]

Are your keystones plug and play and not punch down? So basically you just plug an RJ-45 into the keystone on each side of the face plate? It's really easy for an RJ-45 plug pin and a jack pin to be misaligned from the factory...

When I think RJ-45 keystone / jack this is what I think of...



Otherwise known as a 110 punch down.

[gerti]

BTW a cheap tester like this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-005-_-Product

helps.

[Kristofor]

Well.... If that fixes it and it stays fixed that's great, but if it's even a little bit wonky then spend the couple bucks for a new jack/jacks. It's just not worth the hassle factor of having to mess around with it every time someone jiggles the wire moving a PC, vacuuming or whatnot...

Another excellent tool that should be in every homeowner's tool box is the combo inductive toner and wire-checker tool with transmit and remote ends with blinkies for every wire not just the 4 pairs. They can be had for <$20, on the cheap end or a bit more for the nicer ones and it can save a ton of hassle (like trips up and down 3 flights of steps) when troubleshooting. Not something you may need now that you've identified this issue, but still not a bad thing to have.

[Bruce Cohen]

Check the colors of the "patch cords" as that's what their called when they're already made up. If one is red, it just might be a "straight thru" cable used to connect two computers to exchange data. It won't work as part of a network.
There are sites on line that will give you more info, just Google Cat 6.

Bruce

[dbhost]

While that is true. Many modern NICs and switches / routers auto negotiate between straight and crossover cables. That isn't as much of a problem as it used to be...

[LCHIEN]

and color is no real indication of crossover or straight... I have red RJ45 patchcords that are normal patchcords.

[natausch]

You should be able to verify if they're crossover by pinging the ip of the computer at the router. If you get nothing; it's an issue at the jacks or in the cables themselves. Even a pre-made cable can have a break in the middle. If you get a response but aren't able to get an assigned IP address you likely have a crossover instead of a standard.

Most likely the jacks since you were able to connect by inverting.

[atgcpaul]

I have determined that all the patch cables are OK. It's just the jack in the
office.

I swapped the jack in the office and the one in the living room with the
jacks pointing the way they should, nothing. With the jack-previously-from-
the-office flipped around in the living room, it works.

So it seems that it's a combination of the jack and the long cable in the middle.
One jack was from Monoprice and one was from Lowes but I don't remember
which is which. The long cable only likes being presented with one side of
the jack--the wrong side. The other 2 patch cables at the ends are different
brands from each other so they don't seem to favor one side of the jack or
the other.

HD only had jacks with a plug-in on one side and a punchdown on the other.
I'm going to head back to Lowes and cross my fingers that the bad jack was
not from Lowes.

It still bugs me that I don't have a definitive answer, though. Maybe the
cable ends on the long patch cable have have their connections more
recessed than other patch cables. And maybe the metal connectors on the
jacks are more pronounced on one side than the other so when the jack is
flipped around, they just engage giving me signal.

[Kristofor]

Ah, you're using a cable with RJ45 connectors on it for your in-wall run...

I generally prefer to terminate into a keystone jack for a more positive connection. Often you can cut the ends off the in-wall cable and do that, but if you know that one of the adapters is bad (and it seems like you've shown that) then just buying a replacement may be the quicker solution...