Royally screwed up when pulling Cat6 in my house. Help!

[n-ster]

So I had my electrician pass about 35 Cat6 cables routed to a central location. So apart from the fact that some cables looked unusable because of kinking etc and I have no idea which ones might be non-functional or limited functionality now that the walls are closed...

He forgot to label the cables. All of them. What's my best option to test the quality of the link and label the cables?

Will this work?:

- Terminate cables to RJ-45 heads
- Use some kind of device that it give me details on the quality of the link, one by one, labeling the cables along the way
- Cut the RJ-45 endings and eliminate the bad links
- Terminate to the patch panel in an organized fashion and terminate to keystones on the other side
- Re-test link

Is there a better way? What tools will I need? I don't mind paying for professional tools simply to make my life easier. The EZ-RJ45 stuff looks nice, so does the JackRapid punchdown tool

 

[Solaris17]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008G8KE90/?tag=tec06d-20

buy a wand. The unit above has a wand and the wand also has an RJ-45 jack so you can test continuity.

the unit is cheap but it should work for what you want and its a great network guy starter kit. Im really biasd towards fluke equipment. but it seems like you just have an issue not a real need for a $600 tester.

 

[brandonwh64]

^^ buy a wand or toner and start tracing cables. That is the only thing you can do except pull it.

 

[Bill_Bright]

That's not much of an electrician if he (1) left crimps in the cables and (2) failed to label them.

That said, I agree with the above recommendations to get some sort of cable tester. Since you have 35 cables, a toner probe will be nice to find and sort out individual cables, but once found, sorted and labeled, not sure you need the probe feature. But you do need a tester to verify each cable run is good once sorted. And a tester is great for anyone who makes their own cables which I recommend because basically, pre-made cables tend to be junk half the time. Just make sure you get a good crimper if you do make your own. The tester and good crimper are worthy investments. This is the tester I have and it works greats (only mine is under the CompuCable brand name).

BTW, I agree that Fluke is the way to go and you don't have to spend and arm and a leg - just part of a foot. Fluke MT-8200-49A.

 

[dorsetknob]

Did you Spec out the job to The Electrician

He forgot to label the cables. All of them. What's my best option to test the quality of the link and label the cables?

Ask him to complete the job you asked for including the plans or routing which should be labeled
otherwise he has done a poor job
failing getting the Electrician to complete the job your have to go with the above suggestions

 

[Atomic77]

That was kind of a stupid thing to do. My guess is that the electrician is not a actual licensed electrician. I had that happen once where the guy that wired our inground pool at one of the houses I lived in wasn't licensed for what he was doing.

 

[Hawkstream]

What are you looking to do? I understand needing to test to see which are good but if its just a home network cant you just plug them all into a switch? It should not matter if you know what cable is going to what room if it is to provide a LAN / internet connection.

 

[Bill_Bright]

My guess is that the electrician is not a actual licensed electrician.

Well, you don't need to be a "licensed" electrician to pull Ethernet, phone or low voltage cables. You don't even need to be an electrician. But common sense says if you are going to have more than one cable terminating in the same place it should be labeled, or different color cables or something to tell them apart.

If the guy was someone doing a favor, then lesson learned I guess. At least your cables are pulled because that is not fun. And your time and the cost of a tester is still getting off easy. Hopefully none of the crimped ones are bad, and if bad, you can use the crimped cable to pull a new good one through.

If you paid the guy, then yeah, he needs to come back and sort them out, and label or tag the cables, IMO. It is not like the labels are expensive.

 

[n-ster]

What are you looking to do? I understand needing to test to see which are good but if its just a home network cant you just plug them all into a switch? It should not matter if you know what cable is going to what room if it is to provide a LAN / internet connection.

It would be a pain to troubleshoot problems, plus I might want to connect 2 devices together or use HDBaseT or use a certain jack for the phone or might need to use a PoE injector etc, plus I want to do things well. Yea he screwed up but he didn't know any better, I should have been there to supervise, oh well.

I didn't even know a tone generator existed! I'm still confused on what I need, I see that Fluke has this tone generator with what they call ABN clips (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FTADX0/?tag=tec06d-20), but then I see "Banjo" adapters which look like they could work too?

 

[brandonwh64]

It would be a pain to troubleshoot problems, plus I might want to connect 2 devices together or use HDBaseT or use a certain jack for the phone or might need to use a PoE injector etc, plus I want to do things well. Yea he screwed up but he didn't know any better, I should have been there to supervise, oh well.

I didn't even know a tone generator existed! I'm still confused on what I need, I see that Fluke has this tone generator with what they call ABN clips (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FTADX0/?tag=tec06d-20), but then I see "Banjo" adapters which look like they could work too?

I have two just like that one! It comes in handy not only just on ethernet but any wire you need to find on the other end. I used it on my truck build to see where wires went in the wiring harness

 

[n-ster]

I have two just like that one! It comes in handy not only just on ethernet but any wire you need to find on the other end. I used it on my truck build to see where wires went in the wiring harness

Cool! So I go to each room and strip the cat6 and clip to certain strands? The wand can test continuity too right?

 

[brandonwh64]

Cool! So would this be a better buy than the banjo adapters http://www.flukenetworks.com/datacom-cabling/installation-tools/Modular-Adapters that could be connected to a tone generator I'm guessing? Do they serve the same purpose in that scenario?

Banjo adapters come in hand when toning RJ11 but in your case I would go ahead and install the panduit ends and use a RJ45 cable to tone out.

 

[n-ster]

Is the continuity test enough to determine if the cable is in good shape? Does the wand + tone generator test that? In which case, I'm guessing I'd have to test each strand for continuity?

Thanks for all the hand-holding help btw

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I have one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000VM6TTI/?tag=tec06d-20

It tells you if they're electrically good. It can also be used to find where the cable goes but that involves plugging in the larger unit to one cable (requires RJ45 end on it) and then plugging the remote in to all of the cables where they terminate and see which one lights up. Can hit two birds with one stone that way.

 

[95Viper]

It would be a pain to troubleshoot problems, plus I might want to connect 2 devices together or use HDBaseT or use a certain jack for the phone or might need to use a PoE injector etc, plus I want to do things well. Yea he screwed up but he didn't know any better, I should have been there to supervise, oh well.

I didn't even know a tone generator existed! I'm still confused on what I need, I see that Fluke has this tone generator with what they call ABN clips (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FTADX0/?tag=tec06d-20), but then I see "Banjo" adapters which look like they could work too?

Sorry, n-ster, that they did not label or test them.
If you lived near me I would come over and help.
Old hand at testing and installing. Splicer for many years.

Is the continuity test enough to determine if the cable is in good shape? Does the wand + tone generator test that? In which case, I'm guessing I'd have to test each strand for continuity?

Thanks for all the hand-holding help btw

A plain toner and probe do not test... however, you can sometimes tell if there is an open, short or ground.
There are testers that provide the complete range of options from toning to complete testing, all depends on how much you wanna spend. Or, if, you get lucky enough to get one on sale.

 

[OneMoar]

all you really need is a basic meter with continuity
terminate the ends of the plugs connect two lines together with a female ethernet coupler
and then on the other end of the cables check them in pairs(be sure to use the same pins on both cables) until your meter indicates continuity
that way you test them in pairs and it will go twice as fast also will eliminate the need for a wireless tester
assuming of course they all terminate in the same room with access
you can of course just get a basic wireless meter which is a really good investment
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006R67TOG/?tag=tec06d-20
option 2
now if all you care about is testing the network cable then get this
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000VM6TTI/?tag=tec06d-20
as for the kinks in the cable so long as its not severed eit should be fine cat6 is fairly resilient

 

[Bill_Bright]

I didn't even know a tone generator existed! I'm still confused on what I need,

A tone generator and receiver let you connect the generator on one end of a cable. Then you connect the receiver on a cable on the other end. If no tone, you move to another cable. If no tone, move to the next cable and so on until you hear the tone. Then you have identified that cable.

Move the generator to the next room and another cable, then use the receiver to find the other end of that cable Do this until you have found and identified (and labeled) all the cables. A bit tedious but the process moves faster and faster as you identify the cables.

With a probe, you put the generator on one end then you use the probe like a metal detector on the rats nest of cables at the other end - swinging back and forth to hopefully zero in on the proper cable. You can then use the tone receiver to positively identify the other end. This process can be a little faster - at least in the beginning. Probes are really nice if this is something you will need to do often as part of your job. But in your case, this will be a one-time project, so a generator and receiver is really all you need.

 

[terroralpha]

it was a dumb move to kink the data cables. i'm guessing he thought that Ethernet is like a phone line. as long you don't cut it it works. but fortunately they are CAT6 and those protect the copper wires really well. you should be ok.

i was in a situation like this before. i put key stone jack on all the cables (27 of them) on both ends. connected all the ends at the patch panel side to a 32 port switch, then walked around with a 5 port switch testing each workstation end 1 at a time. matched the lines up by seeing which lights started blinking on the patch panel side.

once i figured out which end went where, i popped the patch panel ends into a patch panel in the order i wanted. had 1 person help me and we got it done in an hour.