Chapter 3



Cable Lab

Here we created a straight through cable from CAT-5 cable and two RJ-45 jacks.  This lab was very straight forward and with the wiring diagram pretty simple. 

The first thing we had to do was to take the CAT-5 cable and use a standard pair of wire strippers to get the UTP’s exposed from inside the outer yellow cover of the cable.  Once they’re exposed we untwisted them and separated them by color. 

Once we had the wires separated we used the 568b Cable Standard:

to organize and setup the way they wires would be for insertion into the RJ-45 connectors.  This was one of the most important steps because the two ends of the cable had to be identical for it to be an actual straight through cable and work properly.  As the diagram above shows, all 8 of the wires are used and they are identical in both ends the way they are setup.  This makes the straight through cable.

Once the wires were trimmed back so they were about a quarter of an inch in length, we slipped them into the RJ-45 connector (ensuring the connectors clip was facing away from us) and watched to make sure the order did not change and that the ends of the wires remained flush and as far to the end of the connector as possible.  We then used a tool called a crimper to close the opening of the connector around the cable so the wires would not come out of the connector.  After the first end was completed it was a rinse and repeat on the other end and then we had a completed cable.

After the cable was completed we hooked it up to a tester to test the connectivity of the cable and make sure that it was done correctly.  We also did a punch down connection that also required the CAT-5 cable to be opened up and the UTP’s to be exposed and separated.  Once they were separated we followed the color code on the punch down connector to place the UTP wires where required, then we used the punch down tool to “punch” the wires down into the slots and trim the ends off in one swift motion.

The following picture shows the tester with my finished straight through cable connected and tested, the crimper tool, wire stripers, punch down tool and the finished punch down.