Quote:
Originally Posted by stomachmonkey
I've crimped way more cable than I care to think about.
Personally I'd only crimp my own for long runs across the building.
For short rack runs I won't do my own. No reason to really. Buy different lengths and you can achieve the same thing without the risk of a couple of bad crimps causing issues.
Your time is much better spent clearly labeling each cable on both ends.
YMMV
|
Couldn't agree more - quite apart from the time factor, if you look, you should be able to buy moulded, tested cables in standard sizes for less than than the cost of the parts to build your own. The last RJ-45 cables I made professionally (about 11 years ago) had odd-ball wiring for async server consoles. Even for home use, I buy machine made/tested cables. I might repair a connector if I can't be bothered to pull a replacement, but that's about it.
It doesn't sound (based on a 200ft reel of cable) like you have many machines/drops to worry about. Otherwise I'd advise that a professional outfit can astonish you with how fast/tidy/well/cheap they can do such jobs.
I bought a $40 cable tester that maps out pairs, measures cross-talk, length and various other useful information - including wiremapping the runs. I won't use a cable I crimped without one - they can save much time. A professional wiring outfit will have a $5,000 tool that does the same thing (and much more besides).
The exact same crimping tools that Radio Shack carry look to be on Ebay for a fraction of the price (like about 10%). The "professional" crimping equipment? Probably really not worth the money unless you're a contractor doing it for a living - plus most of the mid-priced stuff I've seen is little (or no) better than a decent $10 Chinese-made one.
Buy decent plugs, boots, punchdown blocks and patch panels and cable. But mostly buy ready-made good quality cable.
Bear in mind that you can run 10G over cat 6. Which will be useful when your new equipment comes with such interfaces. Even at 1G speeds, cat 6 is better shielded/less cross talk than cat 5. Which might matter for your longer runs - your core gear should always use the highest speeds possible.
Depending on the current/future size of the environment, if you haven't already done so, now might also be a good time to consider the size of your broadcast domains, e.g. think about separating desktop, servers/NAS appliances, DMZ etc. into their own VLAN(s) and/or address space. It gets much harder to do later...