I don't think I have keystone jacks in my cat6 install...more like cheapstone.

[Papa Hogan]

My electrician has caused me to question the quality of his work, so I took a wall plate off that he installed. He told me his helper wired all the jacks and the coax. He didn't crimp the ends of the coax, but that's a different complaint. So my question is where do I find a wiring diagram of this type of jack? I don't see pin numbers on it, so I have no way to check if he wired it correctly.

What should I do, replace all these with keystones? I ordered a 110 punch down tool, so that's not a problem, but I would need to order the keystones.

Thanks, guys!

 

[kevnich2]

Seriously....wow. Yeah just order some RJ45 keystone jacks off of newegg. You'll likely need to order some two port wall plates and probably redo the coax ends too. If you paid an electrician to do this - have them redo it. For cat6 I doubt that would pass spec at all. That's what you'd do for a phone jack. What's sad is that the time to strip the wire off of each individual wire and screw it in, they could have saved a lot of time by just punching it into a punch down keystone.

To some electricians, they simply don't know the difference and it's all "low voltage wiring" to them.

 

[Papa Hogan]

There's also a light that doesn't turn on unless the switch in another room is on. Needless to say, I don't think I want these guys in my house again, except maybe for the light. Since the 110 punch down tool is on the way, I'll just do it myself after I order the keystones (thanks for the suggestion). I don't mind learning how to connect these things, plus I'll know that the job got done right. Speaking of doing it right, maybe my dad will visit and I'll take advantage of his electrical expertise for the light switch problem.

I also have a friend that used to work for the cable company and he probably has all the tools to fix the coax. It's just a shame I have to go back and take all the wall plates off to fix work that could've been done right the first time.

 

[frowertr]

You need three pieces to clean that crap up:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10513&cs_id=1051309&p_id=5384&seq=1&format=2

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=1042605&p_id=6542&seq=1&format=2#description

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10517&cs_id=1051703&p_id=6727&seq=1&format=2

That is utter garbage for an electrician to call that completed work. I'd let him know you are replacing all those jacks yourself. I'd go ahead and purchase a coax crimper as well:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10509&cs_id=1050902&p_id=7049&seq=1&format=2

There's also a light that doesn't turn on unless the switch in another room is on.

That is just a three way switch. That would have been done on purpose for whatever reason.

 

[kevnich2]

Sorry - I posted to get the keystones at newegg but yeah go thru monoprice. Mot sure you can even get those at newegg. But only order cat6 keystones if the wiring is cat6. The diameter of the wiring is slightly thicker on cat6 than cat5e so you do need correct keystones or you may run into issues.

 

[ScottMac]

Those aren't Cat anything. They're phone jacks.
Replace them with Insulation Displacement Connection (IDC) type.

The fact that there is more than 1/2 inch of exposed (3/8 for Cat6 and above), untwisted pair make them totally out of spec.

Fire your electrician, then sue him for the replacement costs. In the meantime, go to Angie's list and post a seriously negative review.

 

[Eug]

Does he even know you wanted these for networking? Because as far as I can tell, those are standard RJ45 and coaxial wall plates for cable and telephone. Nothing wrong with that... if that's what he thought you wanted installed.

OTOH, it's actually potentially easier and cheaper to just use keystone jacks.

The other problem with electricians installing network and telephone cable is that they have a habit of installing them parallel to the electrical cables. It's easier to do because they can just pull everything at the same time, but that's a big no no for networking.

 

[Red Squirrel]

You need three pieces to clean that crap up:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10513&cs_id=1051309&p_id=5384&seq=1&format=2

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=1042605&p_id=6542&seq=1&format=2#description

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10517&cs_id=1051703&p_id=6727&seq=1&format=2

That is utter garbage for an electrician to call that completed work. I'd let him know you are replacing all those jacks yourself. I'd go ahead and purchase a coax crimper as well:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10509&cs_id=1050902&p_id=7049&seq=1&format=2

Yep that's what I'd go with. The nice thing with those is it's modular. Get the wall plate size you want, mix and match the jacks you want.


I like to do 2 cat6, 1 phone and 1 cable TV, or sometimes 3cat6 and 1 phone. I use cat6 for the phone so if I ever want to convert to ethernet it's easy. I have all the phone splitters and pots splitter at the patch panel.


As for the light switch, almost sounds like it's somehow wired in series to the same circuit when the switch should be for another. Sounds like the wiring is quite messed up for that to even be possible to pull off. D:

 

[imagoon]

You need three pieces to clean that crap up:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10513&cs_id=1051309&p_id=5384&seq=1&format=2

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=1042605&p_id=6542&seq=1&format=2#description

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10517&cs_id=1051703&p_id=6727&seq=1&format=2

That is utter garbage for an electrician to call that completed work. I'd let him know you are replacing all those jacks yourself. I'd go ahead and purchase a coax crimper as well:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10509&cs_id=1050902&p_id=7049&seq=1&format=2



That is just a three way switch. That would have been done on purpose for whatever reason.

This type of coax crimper is light years better:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10509&cs_id=1050902&p_id=3357&seq=1&format=2

 

[imagoon]

Yep that's what I'd go with. The nice thing with those is it's modular. Get the wall plate size you want, mix and match the jacks you want.


I like to do 2 cat6, 1 phone and 1 cable TV, or sometimes 3cat6 and 1 phone. I use cat6 for the phone so if I ever want to convert to ethernet it's easy. I have all the phone splitters and pots splitter at the patch panel.


As for the light switch, almost sounds like it's somehow wired in series to the same circuit when the switch should be for another. Sounds like the wiring is quite messed up for that to even be possible to pull off. D:

Or they pulled the power off a 3 way switch not realizing that it would not be on all the time. So yeah... stupid...

 

[Papa Hogan]

That is just a three way switch. That would have been done on purpose for whatever reason.

So if that's a 3-way switch, all I should have to do is change it to a normal one? I might take it apart to see.

Sorry - I posted to get the keystones at newegg but yeah go thru monoprice.

When I saw the price at newegg, I said, "That can't be right. I might have to work more overtime."

Those aren't Cat anything. They're phone jacks.
Replace them with Insulation Displacement Connection (IDC) type.

The fact that there is more than 1/2 inch of exposed (3/8 for Cat6 and above), untwisted pair make them totally out of spec.

Fire your electrician, then sue him for the replacement costs. In the meantime, go to Angie's list and post a seriously negative review.

Is there anything I can do now short of replacing what's already in the walls? I can pull the cat6 out a little from the box to expose some of the sheathing, but I don't want to damage the cable. How much should I pull out to work with? They used solid copper, not stranded, so I don't want to put too much force on it.

Does he even know you wanted these for networking? Because as far as I can tell, those are standard RJ45 and coaxial wall plates for cable and telephone. Nothing wrong with that... if that's what he thought you wanted installed.

OTOH, it's actually potentially easier and cheaper to just use keystone jacks.

The other problem with electricians installing network and telephone cable is that they have a habit of installing them parallel to the electrical cables. It's easier to do because they can just pull everything at the same time, but that's a big no no for networking.

I specifically told my general contractor that it was for network. "Yeah, I want RJ45 jacks all over the house except the kitchen, put RJ11". Which is what they did. I may advise the general to find a new electrician. Or maybe not. He's pissed me off too, not returning my calls.

At this point, all I can do is hope I don't have electrical too close to the cat6 because the drywall's up and we're moved in. I'll see what the transfer speed's like once it's complete.

I like to do 2 cat6, 1 phone and 1 cable TV, or sometimes 3cat6 and 1 phone. I use cat6 for the phone so if I ever want to convert to ethernet it's easy. I have all the phone splitters and pots splitter at the patch panel.

If only I'd thought of that behind the TV!! I ordered a switch to fix it, though. F'in bluray, xbox, tv, and pc. 5-port switch back there I guess. I've never even connected the tv to internet, so I'll see if it's anything worth having.

As for the light switch, almost sounds like it's somehow wired in series to the same circuit when the switch should be for another. Sounds like the wiring is quite messed up for that to even be possible to pull off.

I hope it's not that. Sounds more complicated than changing a switch.

This type of coax crimper is light years better:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

Thanks for that link! At this point, I don't have cable tv, so that might be a future purchase along with the fittings. But sh*t, I might as well take it all apart once.

 

[Papa Hogan]

Why would anyone use cat6 for phone? Ridiculous!

 

[imagoon]

Thanks for that link! At this point, I don't have cable tv, so that might be a future purchase along with the fittings. But sh*t, I might as well take it all apart once.

Just make sure you buy the correct cable ends also. That one I linked is a compression coax terminator. You need compression F terminations which are a bit longer, and normally have a blue or purple plastic ring on the back. However once installed, compressions done right will likely out last the house.

 

[ScottMac]

Quote:
Those aren't Cat anything. They're phone jacks.
Replace them with Insulation Displacement Connection (IDC) type.

The fact that there is more than 1/2 inch of exposed (3/8 for Cat6 and above), untwisted pair make them totally out of spec.

Fire your electrician, then sue him for the replacement costs. In the meantime, go to Angie's list and post a seriously negative review.

Is there anything I can do now short of replacing what's already in the walls? I can pull the cat6 out a little from the box to expose some of the sheathing, but I don't want to damage the cable. How much should I pull out to work with? They used solid copper, not stranded, so I don't want to put too much force on it.

====================================================================================

The way the "Category" system works, the span of the cable takes on the rating of the lowest component; so even though it is (might be?) Cat6 rated cable, if there are unrated jacks or plugs terminating it, it becomes an unrated span.

If you have Cat6 cable, and you replace the phone jacks with data-grade jacks that are also rated for Cat6, and you follow the other rules for terminating Cat6 properly, then you have a Cat6 rated span.

The rules are things like (for Cat6) no more than 3/8" of exposed wires (out of the sheath), there can be no more than 3/8" untwisted (the same 3/8 that's exposed), there can be no bends in the cable less then a two inch diameter (a Coke can is a good model), you can't exert more than the cable's pulling tension (different for all cables, but tend to be ~12=14 pounds of pull), no crushing (like an over-tight cable tie ...if you compress the sheath, the cable is out of spec), no excessive twisting (distortion of the sheath), and the list goes on. Obviously a jumper that is rolled over by a chair, stepped on, chewed (child or pet), or overly bent also blows the span out of spec.

Short version: if you have Cat6, solid conductor, in the wall, you should be able to properly terminate it with the proper connectors and / or panels and it's likely you'll have a Cat6 span.

 

[frowertr]

So if that's a 3-way switch, all I should have to do is change it to a normal one? I might take it apart to see.

Three way switches are a little more difficult to wire than single poles as they have a traveler wire that runs from one switch to the other switch. If you don't know what you are doing I'd let someone else take a look at it.

Is there anything I can do now short of replacing what's already in the walls? I can pull the cat6 out a little from the box to expose some of the sheathing, but I don't want to damage the cable. How much should I pull out to work with? They used solid copper, not stranded, so I don't want to put too much force on it.

Well at least they used solid copper Cat6. You need a couple inches to work with but it looks like you already have that. You can just unscrew all those wires (don't cut them as you may need them if there is no slack in the wall) from the terminals and then use those same wires in the keystones. You will want to have the jacket pulled up into the keystone before you punch down and trim off all the excess wires from the outer edge of the keystone AFTER you punch down. Here is a good vid that shows you how:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iei7n1NAg5w

At this point, all I can do is hope I don't have electrical too close to the cat6 because the drywall's up and we're moved in. I'll see what the transfer speed's like once it's complete.

Cat6 is pretty hardy and rejects noise and interference to a good degree. Hopefully you will be ok. If there are problems I see attic work and becoming adept at running a wire snake down between walls in your future!

I'm curious, if you told him you wanted data RJ45 jacks, where did he terminate the other ends of all those jacks to and what does that look like?

 

[Eug]

I specifically told my general contractor that it was for network. "Yeah, I want RJ45 jacks all over the house except the kitchen, put RJ11". Which is what they did. I may advise the general to find a new electrician. Or maybe not. He's pissed me off too, not returning my calls.

At this point, all I can do is hope I don't have electrical too close to the cat6 because the drywall's up and we're moved in. I'll see what the transfer speed's like once it's complete.

Just to be clear, RJ45 doesn't necessarily mean Ethernet networking. Many general contractors, and even electricians, wouldn't necessarily know better either. Certainly, my general contractor had no idea at all about this stuff. BTW, my electrician cut one of my CAT5e cables by accident and proceeded to splice up the wires one by one like a regular telephone wire. He apologized for the accident, but truly thought his splice job was sufficient. He's a master electrician too. Luckily the walls were still open, so I just re-ran another line to replace that cut one.

Maybe the experts will crucify me for saying this... but you don't have to be in a big rush to reterminate everything right away. You could perhaps just reterminate the ones you need to use right now, and reterminate the rest as necessary over time. I've used el-crappo RJ45 telephone couplers in a pinch to connect two ends of CAT5e together and they've worked fine for Gigabit until I got the time to re-run the entire line.

I'm curious though, does it currently work with Gigabit?

 

[Papa Hogan]

Just make sure you buy the correct cable ends also. That one I linked is a compression coax terminator. You need compression F terminations which are a bit longer, and normally have a blue or purple plastic ring on the back. However once installed, compressions done right will likely out last the house.

Sounds like I should do it all at once, but I'm gonna have to wait till payday for anything else, says my wife. Dangit! I already ordered a couple switches and a NIC from amazon, as recommended by JackMDS, as well as some things from monoprice.

Cat6 is pretty hardy and rejects noise and interference to a good degree. Hopefully you will be ok. If there are problems I see attic work and becoming adept at running a wire snake down between walls in your future!

I'm curious, if you told him you wanted data RJ45 jacks, where did he terminate the other ends of all those jacks to and what does that look like?

I don't think so! If this doesn't work, I'll get the general contractor to tear the walls apart and redo the whole thing. It won't come to that though, I'm pretty sure.

As requested:

and

and a few photos of the newly remodeled house.

PC just waiting to get hooked up to gigabit.

The rules are things like (for Cat6) no more than 3/8" of exposed wires (out of the sheath), there can be no more than 3/8" untwisted (the same 3/8 that's exposed), there can be no bends in the cable less then a two inch diameter (a Coke can is a good model), you can't exert more than the cable's pulling tension (different for all cables, but tend to be ~12=14 pounds of pull), no crushing (like an over-tight cable tie ...if you compress the sheath, the cable is out of spec), no excessive twisting (distortion of the sheath), and the list goes on. Obviously a jumper that is rolled over by a chair, stepped on, chewed (child or pet), or overly bent also blows the span out of spec.

Is it even doable to punch the wires down with 3/8" exposed?

 

[Eug]

If you're shopping at Monoprice, you may as well get one of these.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10514&cs_id=1051401&p_id=7253&seq=1&format=2

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10514&cs_id=1051401&p_id=7304&seq=1&format=2

Is it even doable to punch the wires down with 3/8" exposed?

Well, you would have cut off all the excess after punching down.

 

[Papa Hogan]

Maybe the experts will crucify me for saying this... but you don't have to be in a big rush to reterminate everything right away. You could perhaps just reterminate the ones you need to use right now, and reterminate the rest as necessary over time. I've used el-crappo RJ45 telephone couplers in a pinch to connect two ends of CAT5e together and they've worked fine for Gigabit until I got the time to re-run the entire line.

I'm curious though, does it currently work with Gigabit?

As seen in the photos, it's not terminated yet, so it doesn't work and hasn't been tested. I'm eagerly waiting on the tool and wall-mounted patch panel from monoprice to do the job properly.

Realistically, there's only 2 out of 5 that need terminated right away...the one by the TV and one in my stepson's room for xbox.

 

[Papa Hogan]

If you're shopping at Monoprice, you may as well get one of these.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10514&cs_id=1051401&p_id=7253&seq=1&format=2

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10514&cs_id=1051401&p_id=7304&seq=1&format=2


Well, you would have cut off all the excess after punching down.

Yeah! The first link is the one I'm waiting on.

 

[Eug]

It is terminated, just with the wrong termination. However, it's possible it could work if the wires are in the right place. It'd be horribly out of spec, but still, it could work. Better than nothing anyway while you wait for the other stuff to arrive.

I actually ran 100 Mbps Ethernet over a short run of CAT3 just for fun, and that worked too.

 

[Papa Hogan]

It is terminated, just with the wrong termination. However, it's possible it could work if the wires are in the right place. It'd be horribly out of spec, but still, it could work. Better than nothing anyway while you wait for the other stuff to arrive.

I actually ran 100 Mbps Ethernet over a short run of CAT3 just for fun, and that worked too.

Oh, it's not terminated...those are bare wires sitting on the floor and on the chimney. That's all the electrician said he always does. I just have the cable going to the modem and from there to a wireless router running dd-wrt. That's how I'm posting. My stepson could have internet to his xbox if he'd just plug in his router that I have set up as bridged.

 

[frowertr]

Cool looking house man. I love my hardwood floors and I am sure you will too!

Hopefully he labled those Cat6 cables so you know what cable goes to what room. Although if he didn't wire with the correct jacks to begin with then probably not...

At any rate, let us know how the testing goes once you get some keystones and do some re-wiring. I'd be interested to know two things: Did he run all those Cat6 parallel to 120v electrical lines and, if so, how is the Cat6 performing?

Looks like you are making the right move with the patch panel. Get yourself a small server rack and you will be in business.

 

[Eug]

Here's mine. A bit messy but it works.

12-port patch panel on the left, and a cheap dumb 24-port switch on the right.

The switch is a 1U meant for a server rack, but since space was limited and I didn't feel like buying a server rack, I just hung it from the wall.

The switch came with a fan (top left) but since the switch never became even warm I just removed the fan and it's run fine for the past two years.

 

[Papa Hogan]

Cool looking house man. I love my hardwood floors and I am sure you will too!

Hopefully he labled those Cat6 cables so you know what cable goes to what room. Although if he didn't wire with the correct jacks to begin with then probably not...

At any rate, let us know how the testing goes once you get some keystones and do some re-wiring. I'd be interested to know two things: Did he run all those Cat6 parallel to 120v electrical lines and, if so, how is the Cat6 performing?

Looks like you are making the right move with the patch panel. Get yourself a small server rack and you will be in business.

Yep, solid maple floor in the living room and dining room is really nice, although my wife's favorite is the grouted vinyl tile in the kitchen and entry. It's really hard to pick a favorite for me.

The cables are definitively labeled on duct tape. Good enough!

I can't remember for sure if the cables are parallel to electrical. What should I do to test them once all the lines are terminated?