atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring how do you test your cables, if more than one installed

"Pictures of Typical Work"

I don't do a lot of cable installs right now, so it's been a while...but 5 years ago I used a Fluke meeter that had 8 remotes. The really nice thing with the 8 remotes is that they all had IDs that showed up on my cable tester on the other end, so I knew if I mislabeled a cable or put it in the wrong position on a wall plate.

If there is noise/crosstalk/split-pairs/attenuation on the line, your meter probably wont' detect it - so long as the cable is wired straight through. If you reversed (on both ends) say the orange and brown wires (not the striped ones, just the solid ones), your tester would say things were fine. But it wouldn't work for ethernet.

I've worked for cheap employers before who won't fix things if they think it's working right. So I feel your pain. All I would suggest is to do any additions correctly - the first thing to do when in a hole is to stop digging!!! A patch panel can be bought for $100 or so, and is well worth the expense. Maybe fix one or two old cables when you put in new ones. You'll be amazed at how soon things can get fixed. The room you pictured could look very nice - something you'd be proud of.

One more thing I noticed - the short blue patch cable you use for your remote is improperly crimped - too much of the cable jacket is stripped off. It should continue so that it is also under the strain relief (the plastic wedge that gets crimped by the tool) in the plug body. This will make the plug last longer. Otherwise the strain relief on the plug can't do its job and someone can too easily pull the cable out of the plug.

I think I last "cripmed" a cable about 5 years ago in my amusement park installation. We ended up digging it back up and using a Cat-5e splice kit instead :-)

Here's how I solved my problem of identifying cables https://www.techtoolsupply.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=TP314 It won't test them, but it works to finding where the cables are in a mystery installation. I still use the old 3 or 4 toner method (pair of 77's, and a couple of random toners) to find cables.

Carl

I use the datalite with 100 remotes and two units , one light red one green

using a homemade cable here is foolish , you can be a factory 6" cord for next to nothing . in a failure You would always have to suspect that cord (I would )

I haven't crimped a network cable in ages either - at least 5 years as well. Patch cords are cheap (provided you get them some place like Graybar and not someplace like OfficeDepot or Wal-Mart). One caution though - don't buy the cheap stuff online (I had a coworker that caused an outage to 6,000 nodes with a cheap patch cable that failed months after putting it into service; he thought he saved money by finding a cable for 50 cents).

But I'm surprised that people say they haven't crimped a cable in 5+ years...don't you guys also end up with someone saying that their Polycom conference phone's cable got yanked out of the wall? (at least the older ones don't have a user-replaceable cord) I've lost count of the number of connectors I've re-crimped on them - and I'm not a phone guy. I could probably set up a side business fixing the things!

Seems to be discontinued.

Doh! Posted this one in error.