I've been working in IT for 30 years..started as a web tech at an ISP, did cabling for years, now I work as a Architect....watching Dawid work on those Cat6 cables triggered me so hard I wanted to go cry in a corner lol. But nice job getting it all to work.
I'm a professional low voltage technician and spend a good chunk of my days running and terminating cat6a in houses. This was painful to watch. I almost think he's trolling.
@@therealcojo Haha!! Yeah my crimping technique seems to have gone down well. 😂 Sorry for ignoring your professional advise and not using the patch panel.
If someone hasn't mentioned this already, you may want to add a small fan to the Lemspum cards heatsink. These types of cards (10G+ Fiber cards) are designed to be installed in a server with a constant, high airflow. When they're installed in a workstation, there's usually not enough air movement directly on the cards heatsink for it to cool sufficiently and they may get really hot and fail prematurely. Most people (including myself lol) just zip tie a 10mm fan to the heatsink and call it a day
That was an Intel card, right? Are these along the same thread as the junker HP/QLogic cards that come equipped with a passive heatsink and have an actual fire risk to them? I picked up a 50mm fan and bolted it down to the heatsink and installed the card in my SFF Athlon box. Gets very warm but it has airflow and that's keeping it alive. If you have a card of that nature and it overheats, it takes out the ENTIRE network stack and has to be rebooted before it comes back.
Nah, the single port X520 DA1 doesn't run hot enough to require active cooling, the heatsink alone is fine. If you use the dual port card with 2 SFP+ attached however then active cooling is recommended. You can also use the less power hungry Mellanox cards as an inexpensive alternative, those only use pcie x4 slots as well instead of x8 that the x520 uses. They only come in one SFP+ port variant however
As someone who's crimped hundreds of RJ45 connectors ... I gigled HARD watching this! Also ... I would have used that wonderfull little patch panel you were given and then just bought some nice CAT6 cables to go into it. I remember going into to my friends house while it was being built with a box of CAT5 years ago to run network cable everywhere. Good times.
If you do it every day, yes. If you only do it occasionally you'll eventually forget it. But good thing the internet exists so you can look up how the T568B standard should be done.
You're assuming the person who installed the other ends complied with that scheme. Good chance, sure, they labeled their cables so not a newbie, but still.
@@MaxxJagX exactly... found a network with A/B combinations and couldn't figure out why it wasn't working... had to reterminate the whole panel to B to get rid of issues, but worked like a charm once I did that.
Just be thankful that you got the connectors where the wire goes all the way through. The "regular" ones where you have to trim the connectors to the exact length (just over 1 cm) BEFORE installing them in the plug. Can be a real pain in the *** to install, even if you have done it 100's of times
Yes, I've done that a few times at an internship. Pain in the butt because those wires always tend to shuffle around a bit after pulling them out of the connector and then trimming them. At home I just got those passthrough ones, there's like no price difference and it saves me having to lose my sanity over trying to correctly align those wires.
It also depends on the type of cable and what type of shielding or rigid core they have. So many different types you never know what you are walking in to. Lol
Eek, dont remind me about those pre trim heads. pass-through all day!! also watching him pass 1 wire at a time through the head was p a i n f u l to watch
Copying speed from the hard drive will vary depending on where the files are physically stored on the platter. If you're copying files to/from a blank or near empty drive, the files will be stored on the outside of the platter, which spins faster. As the drive fills up it will start storing files towards the centre of the platter, which spins more slowly. My NAS drive(s) copy at about 250MB/s when new/empty, but when near full the speed drops to nearly half that.
Also i think that when doing copy is not 1:1 straight ahead. The copy software reads som chunks ahead to make a "table" so it can track that the copy is done correctly with no errors and every single bit has been copied. As i remember, even in the old days with Amiga the copy software work that way.
Hold the wires on order. Trim and KEEP HOLDING THEM. Shove onto the connector. Check they are in the same order. Way faster than one at a time even with some errors.
Hey David, stopped early. You want to use the patch panel or keystones. The cables already installed are almost certainly from spools of solid core cable. That cable is meant to be punched down. Regular RJ45 ends may work for a while but will often fail because the pierce the cable. Patch cables you might notice are flexible, that is because they are made from stranded wire and RJ45 connectors don't damage that wire when crimped on. There are other reasons to use patch panels and keystones but thats a major one that could save you some grief in the long run.
While there is good information in here (solid core vs stranded core) solid core wire works just fine in an RJ45 end and will only really fail if you running over it with a chair or something. A network switch that doesn't move much will be fine. I use a solid core cable in my day to day use in my bag as an internet install tech and I'd say they fail maybe twice a year or so then i just toss it or re end.
While it can fail, and usually does so over time, it can last a surprising amount of time. I've been using a cable with solid core wire for about 6 years for all my networking. Now that said, and while it does need a 'special' tool, it's kinda silly not to use a patch panel when you already have one!
Bit of a nitpick, and probably honestly won’t matter for years of use: The patch panel was a better option since you are most likely terminating in-wall ethernet cables, which are more brittle than the kind of Ethernet cables that you buy pre-terminated at the store. The good news is that you can get a patch panel that accepts your terminated ends and still serves the same purpose, with the more flexible type of Ethernet cables connecting to your switch
all us network peeps out here going into PTSD mode chanting the mantra "white orange, orange... white green, blue... white blue, green... white brown, brown" over and over again
Should have used the patch panel, they are so much easier to cable. You would have gotten the whole thing done in the time it took you to work out how the crimping tool works..
the thing not mentioned about the patch panel is that you can't just use a crimping tool... you also need a punch-down tool to terminate to the panel and there would also be mounting of the panel to a wall or desk needed to stabilize for that punch-down process.
@@jeffjohnson2731You sound like someone who has never done this professionally. Stabilising the patch panel is a luxury. My last install was done at the top of an a-frame ladder because some numpty cut the cables too short. Well, only a few but that doesn't matter because you can only work with the length of the shortest cable unless you want a huge mess instead of a nice loom.
@@clubley2 professional work is always done in a rack of some type... the rest is just residential and you do best effort to keep it clean and make it work. It would have been nice to see Dawid use a small rack of some type to clean up the mess, but that's a longer video than I'm sure he wanted to make and not exactly cheap.
This whole video had to be done as comedic relief, there's no way he didn't google anything before purchasing. At least DAC is a cheap alternative when it comes to reducing latency.
You sitting there crimping the Lan cable reminds me of the time in university when i needed a 10m lan cable and I went to a local electrical shop. The guy handed me the cable and the crimp tool and heads and said “you can do the crimping yourself” 😂 I sat there doing it for 30mins… it worked though!
It looks like you crimped the cables wrong, the gray outer layer should go far enough to get crimped too, otherwise you wont have strain relief and it will be a weak cable.
You'll want to use T-568B as your wiring scheme. T-568A is meant for backwards-compatibility for if you want to carry one or multiple POTS phone lines through the same connector. However, this assumes standards were followed at both ends. In general you can use any wiring scheme you want as long as (a) it's the same on both ends and (b) the differential pairs are twisted together. Also, buy toolless RJ45 connectors. Even for home use they make life so much easier.
Cool i actually didnt know why you are supposed to use the B variant. I was just told at school that I was supposed to do it like that, and never really questioned it
Tbh I wired up my whole house to the b standard without ever finding a good reason why b is preferred to othe than: it is like that. In my opinion it doesn't matter as long as you stick to one of them.
Both variants are exactly the same if you use the same on both ends. The only reason there are two variants is to allow one to flip the RX/TX pair in the so-called "crossover" cables so that devices of the same category can be linked together (e.g. two PCs without a network switch/hub). Network devices nowadays can auto-negotiate but older ones can't. The whole myth that there is any difference at all between them is because organizations liked to mandate which one to use so there would be no confusion, but they are 100% electrically equivalent. Other than that, there is zero reason not to mix A and B cables (again, if you use the same one on both ends of the cable). They are 100% the same.
Jesus watching you add heads to the cables was funny af. Im sure the not looking up how to actually do it before the video was intentional comedy gold..
Aw man, really wish you used the patch panel. Though you would have needed a punch down tool. A quickport/keystone compatible one would have been so easy to wire up and just snap in the jacks. If you ever decide to clean it all up again, id be happy to collab with ya on it and come up there and help out! Glad it all worked out.
The Windows file transfer software is notoriously bad at copying files at large volume, and slows down at smaller files. You should try Teracopy. You could verify, pause, even continue copy even after interrupted.
You're correct that you don't need to strip the inner wires. One trick I've found to make things easier is that you can grab the piece of outer jacket you stripped off, place it between the twisted pairs and twist. That'll separate the pairs, and then you can just run the wires on the edge of a desk or table to smooth them out. The previous tenant probably had a patch panel on there, which is why the cables were hacked up.
I don't know why, but other than you skipping on the patch panel, the rest felt rather satisfying to watch. Watching someone struggle with CAT wiring reminded me of my college days watching others having fun with it. Personally, not a pro, but I can pop those out fairly easily and quickly. If it wasn't for the possibility of having to rip holes in my walls, and finding weird things i'd have wired my house by now.
Oh my goodness this gives me flashbacks to a networking class where we had to crimp our own cables and use them in a network with super old hardware, making troubleshooting a nightmare
Tip for anyone watching and attempting to terminate RJ-45. If you align all eight wires properly and slide them all at once it goes much smoother and quicker than one at a time.
nope most people dont especially when they usually running an NVMe boot drive now days. Still though if you can get 200MB/s thats still double what 1G would have done, literally half the time.
@@profosist true, but I was expecting him to know, since he's well-versed in computer stuff and all :D I don't judge though, my comment was meant in a lighthearted way
@@snjert8406 and it sped up and slowed down because of variable data density based upon disk zones... there's more data on the edge of the platters than towards the hub, but it's going the same RPM regardless, so it's reading more data per revolution, thus is faster, on the outer tracks than the inner tracks.
I ran fiber from my desktop to SFP+ switch and then fiber to my Truenas Scale. I did that in my office only cost about $200.00. You also might want to blow a fan on the sfp+ modules they get hot. So to answer the que you have about speed jumping up the fuller the drive is slower it will transfer as it gets empty out it will speed up.
As someone who used to work in a colocation centre and run custom length patch cables all the time, I loved seeing all the mistakes being made :D It's surprisingly easy to mess up the crimp if you don't have someone telling you the problems to look out for. Well done! For the future, untwist the pairs, straighten them up, put them in the order you want, clip the ends the same length, and put them all into the plug at the same time. You can make the fine adjustments after that. I've never seen someone try to insert the pairs one at a time :O
I started crimping my own cables once. They worked but, I found that the store bought cables that are soldered rather than crimped had better signals. Also the fewer terminations the better. A box on the wall to connect looks more professional but, that's two extra places where it's metal touching metal rather than being a single piece of metal. A soldered cable straight through the wall from point A to point B gives the cleanest signal.
I used to install networks, good job on actually crimping the cables first try! It takes me a try or two sometimes and I did it almost every day for 5 years. You're also lucky that you picked the right order for the pairs! There's four different orders the wires could go in, two of which being crossover variants of the others (although most modern gear will work with/without a crossover cable), and you would not be getting a connection if you got it wrong! One thing I would recommend, however, is getting a patch panel. As others have said, the cables you were dealing with are meant to be installed in a wall. Flexing these cables are bad for the wires inside, which tends to happen a bit more when these types of cables are terminated. To replace everything with a patch panel you don't need to cut the ends off, thankfully. Instead you should find a "Keystone patch panel" and some RJ-45 couplers for it and use that instead. Using patch panels isn't a waste in my opinion! You have the option to easily change which cable connects to what without having to worry about the existing cable being long enough, or you can easily plug directly into another cable for troubleshooting. Plus if you ever leave this space, the next owner will thank you!
Those cables are DAC cables, which are copper not fiber. The inner part of the platters on the drives are moving slower so you will get lower speed on that than on the outer part of the platters. Basically you will always have variable speed with mechanical harddrives.
@@frederichardy8844 you could have short fiber cables, I have seen many that were just within a rack. The key thing is that fiber would be SFP+ modules and separate cables. It could also get very complex very quickly. These DAC cables were the right choice for this use, even if they are not fiber. He could have also gotten SFP+ copper modules for 10Gb over copper and had essentially the same results, but those are a lot more expensive than the DAC.
@@jeffreyparker9396 I mention longer cable because he complains that is DAC cable is too short... But there's so many technical bad choices in the video that I assume it's for entertainment purposes and generate a lots of comments... and that works, no?
Watching you work on those RJ45 cables reminds me of what I teach my interns to do . Everyone struggles at the beginning , but with enough practice and some cheating passthrough connectors makes your life a million times easier
The main reason for using a patch panel is that you know which cable goes where at both ends easily. You got lucky that the previous owner labeled the cables here, but normally that's not an assumption you can make will be true for most people's situation. By setting them up with a patch panel it makes it easy to take down your setup and then you or someone else can easily come back and install new kit later. That said, you CAN get RJ45 patch panels as well, we're actually using one in our rack because it was a lot cleaner to route those cables into it and connect them to the back of a patch panel, which we then get to connect into our switch however we want, and all you need is a 6" to 1' patch cable to connect it to the port on the switch in front of the rack after it passes through the patch terminal. It also made a lot more sense to do it this way since we had devices we also needed to patch into the panel from their ethernet ports in the back of the rack, before going to the switch connections on the front of the rack. It just made a lot more sense to do it that way when we had a couple dozen hookups in total after including the devices in the rack and the 18 wires to different rooms and dedicated lines for wireless APs that we installed.
The technique for shoving the individual wires in the RJ45 plug is more like "put in right order, squish between fingertips, trim to length, push wires in connectors, crimp" (for traditional plugs; for through hole plugs you can skip the trim bit). You want to have as little unwound copper as possible, especially at higher speeds. Should take a couple of minutes per end once you get the hang of it. For functionality I'd accept nothing less than an iperf check, because Ethernet will work with only two working pairs, it'll just be slow. The toaster hard drive dock will be limited by the drives, so maybe 200 MB/s max. Haven't come across one that doesn't top 400 MB/s with an SSD.
As some have already pointed out, the sheath needs to go into the connector for strain relief. Also, the rj45 connectors for solid or stranded wire are different. You need to get the right ones. As well, on these high speed cables, it's important to maintain the twist in the pairs as much as possible. Keep the twist right up to the termination point. It makes a difference in signal integrity.
I am so glad I don't deal with network cbles anymore. I used to do this as part of my job, but terminating wires and wiring was one of the thing I hated the most about being in IT. You'd get everything pulled and in some cases, terminated, only to find a break somewhere. I will say that numbering and documentation (as with many things) is VERY important and makes troubleshooting quite easy (at least narrowing down which line is what at each end...)
Learning how to make my own Ethernet cables has been my favorite IT skill. It's fun being able to say "I need a _ long cable" and having a spool to just make one is fun and powerful.
"what works" always wins over "prescribed method". The prescribed method is usually the domain of old fuddy duds stuck in dogma because "THATS HOW IVE BEEN DOING IT FOR 40 YEARS DANGIT"
@@XiaOmegaX Or it could be faster, easier, less painful and proven over time to work. I bet if he had someone who could show him the normal way a human makes a rj-45 he would have had more fun doing the job.
@@XiaOmegaXEgo aside, I’m not with the make fun of Dawid crowd because I understand he’s just learning, but it actually is easier and more efficient to do it the “prescribed method”
Dawid learns HDD geometry the hard way 😄 The reason the speed varies is due to physics - the HDD platters spin "faster" linearly on the edge, and "slower" the closer you get to the center, so the speed of reading/writing depends on the physical location of the data. That's why the speed jumps around wildly, as it's copying different files from different locations on the platters.
5:47 For a second I was concerned but then when I saw you had pull through RJ45 modular connectors I knew you had a better chance. T-568B is really the only layout you need to know. OW O GW B BW G BW B
Good job on the terminals. Also most use 568b. Thank GOD you bought heads which you can put the cables through. Back in the days you couldn't and it was HELL I tell you. HELL!
I'm both impressed and appalled at the same time ;-). Well done for getting it working, definitely a skill that the average person does not have or ever expect to understand :D !
Hi Dawid, a DAC cable is a Direct Attach Cable, It has no fibre optic components and uses copper. That's why with a DAC cable you cannot cover the same lengths as with fibre optic SFP's and cables. It is also the reason why it is cheaper.
suggestion, you can arrange the lan cable wires (straight through wire color coding) in order then put it all at once and make sure the end of the wires are aligned and insert it in the rj 45, it will work almost all the time and is more efficient than putting the wires individually.
6:16 get all the cables loose, wiggle them back and forth, then lay them all flat and touching each other, cut straight across all cables, run into end.
watching you put that fitting on Is so funny XD. Once you do a few you can do them in your sleep, Im so happy you showed the struggle of never doing it before.
Who's gonna tell him a DAC cable is not fiber? also, man, i remember struggling with terminating UTP like that. It's so much better once you're used to it! Make sure to use the T-568B standard(Orangewhite-Orange-Greenwhite-Blue-Bluewhite-Green-Brownwhite-Brown) as it is the go-to and has been for over a decade(that said, Auto-MDIX should figure things out if you accidentally make a crossover cable with A on one end and B on the other).
@@BoraHorzaGobuchul DAC stands for Direct Attached Copper. If it were optical it would be an AOC(Active Optical Cable). Both of which are distinct from actual OM fiber with SFP(+) transceivers at either end.
I know this was several weeks ago, but the most important wiring guide Dawid should refer to is this: For the US, use TIA 568-A For Canada, use TIA 568-B For the rest of the world, use what ever your government uses as a standard (will be either or) Then the most important thing: Both ends must be the same standard, so one RJ45 end is wired as 568-a, the other has to be 568-A.
9:00 It would be nice to have rotating parts as part of the standard here. That said, this is absolutely the correct orientation to match a backup PSU or a PDU surge strip. Hanging off the side isn't a big deal when you have high friction outlets.
Be aware there are two different types of RJ45 plug! The commoner ones are for patch (stranded) cable; those have spikes that stab through the centre of each core. Using those on trunk cable (single strand) can cause problems, as the spikes can cut the core and cause it be erratic after a time, or with flexing. Cable pre-fitted with plugs should be patch, but some suppliers use single strand trunk cable as it's cheaper! The proper plugs for trunk have zig-zag spikes that grip the sides of the single strand cable core. (And those don't work reliably on stranded patch cable). You are fare better off with a keystone patch panel & short patch cables to the switch etc. if the cable you have is solid core.
Just 2 weeks ago I crimped my first RJ45 cables. Honestly, I thought I’d lose my mind… had to watch a couple videos to get some confidence. My first two attempts were unsuccessful, every subsequent one worked like a charm. Had I seen this video a little sooner I might have had the confidence to just try it, seeing others struggeling too helps a lot
6:05 pro tip: when you straighten the cables, straighten them in order and try to make them as straight as possible by bending the, back and forth so you can just put them all in at the same time to make that ethernet cable
Canadian Electrician by trade here. We use T568A here in Canada as our standard, which typically goes green/white, green, orange/white, blue, blue/white, orange, brown/white, brown on the male RJ45 ends. We were taught T568 "EH" was the way to remember it in school.
In my teens I spent about 3 months doing an "internship" that was basically just me sitting in a cupboard making custom length network and serial cables for retail till systems (oh and the occasional bespoke retail keyboard with those horrible relegendble keycaps) so I feel your pain with the cables!
The B cable layout is the standard, TECHNICALLY, just having cables in the same order on each side will work, but you might get some signal loss if you don't respect the B standard
Eeey Steel Legend, love that board. In the middle of editing a video for our channel with one. Using as a part of a ridiculous and unnecessary upgrades on a PC i really never use.
This and the NAS video would have been an awesome two-part opportunity to do a collab with someone like Jake or Dan from LTT. Great opp to get some additional exposure from a similar base.
oh, and as an aside, the cable you terminated is not designed to be put in an RJ45 plug, its solid core cable and not designed to be moved around and plugged/unplugged a lot. A patch panel is easier than RJ45 cables, and then you just buy preterminated short patch cables.
Patch Panels are used to protect the very expensive (in theory) hardware of the switch, from the moron running cables, so if the cable run which is the end more likely to get messed up than the switch. Also, that's a passthrough connector. The crimper cuts them to length... Also, you can align the cable ends together, and shove all 8 wires in at one time.
You may never read this but: HDDs have a fast and slow track, the further from the center the faster the HDD gets (like gears). Also moving small files is slower compared to moving one large file of the same size.
As a network professional, no, crimping the cables and plugging them directly into the device does not make more sense. To put it simply, metal, such as the (hopefully copper) in the lines in your in-wall cables, fatigues and breaks, which can cause bad connections or failed connections. To prevent this, the best thing to do is to make sure the cables in the wall move as little as possible. The home-run cables in the walls should be left stationary, which is why we use patch panels. We tie down those in-wall cables so they stay put and don't bend/flex/move at all, which keeps the cables, and the metal inside from fatiguing, and breaking connections. We then use patch cables, usually made from more expensive stranded conductors, to do the connection from the panel to the switch. That way, the only thing you move is the patch cable, which is designed for it, and if the patch cable gets fatigued and breaks, it's MUCH easier than replacing the entire in-wall run. The other ends should be tacked down somehow as well.... even some 3M double-sided mounting tape, adhering them to the wall, is generally sufficient. Just keep them from moving around and those cables will last the life of the structure they're installed in. The most common argument I hear against this is "well, I won't be changing it after installing everything", and to that I say.... YES YOU WILL. When the switch dies, or you want to replace it with something faster, maybe moving from 1G to 2.5G or 5G or 10G or more (whenever that becomes available), you'll need to move the cables to remove them from the existing switch, then plug them into the new switch.... ON TOP OF THAT, the switch is liable to die in the next 5-10 years, so replacing the switch (and moving all the cables around) every 5 years or so, will cause them to fail long before the building has reached the end of its useful life. People who don't use patch panels are either careless (or couldn't give a crap less about it), not thinking long term, or uneducated about the issues. Anyone knowing these problems who doesn't use a patch panel is negligent and should be fired.
part of why the HDD vary in their speed is because when reading from the edge of the platter, the head sweeps past more blocks of data for every rotation, and since the drive has a limited max rotation, the speeds can be faster when the data is stored on the outside blocks
Strip the outer cover a big longer, line up the little strands in order and pinch them flat and cut to length before inserting. Double check color code before crimping.
If you set up your nas pool as 2 vdevs in parallel you can have double the speed, for example 2 vdevs of each 3 drives, so you have double speed, usable capacity of 4 drives and 1or2 parity drives that can fail without data loss
FYI for HDD's the speed depends where on the platter it is; data is read faster from the center compared to the outside as a result of the rotational speed vs the circumference. So transfer speed does vary depending on the platter location. Also if you'd just used the patch panel; then you could have got a punch for like $1.50; and spend the rest of the crimper budget on pre-terminated 6" patch leads. Would have been the same number of terminations but easier; and its just nice and tidy too having all your terminations at the rear
I used to sell all this crap to cable contractors in phoenix. Most important thing is buy a good tool and good components. Back when it was AMP or AT&T but idk anymore I remember when dirt was clean. Davvid I look forward to all your vids. Best on YT!!! Thank you!!!
Adding new RJ45 terminals to ethernet cables is a pain in the ass, even with the right tools. Having the correct sized terminals for the correct size/type cable is a must, especially for pass through RJ45 terminals. Depending on the type of cable, it's also imperative to have the correct wiring schematic for the individually color coded wires as both ends of the cable must match. It's also important to have an ethernet cable tester. The Fluke Networks LIQ-KIT-IE Industrial Ethernet Tester Kit is a godsend for troubleshooting ethernet cables and networks.
