connecting Ethernet devices - Build your home network on a budget part 2

In the first episode of the budget home networking  series we had a look at how to cable our home,  which components to put in such as a 19  inch rack, a patch panel and a switch  and what type of cables and racks to use. Today we will look at how we can interconnect  and extend these devices in order to have a  good Internet connection in the whole house. 

One of the central components of the cabling  infrastructure is the patch panel. This is  where all the cables from the house come together.  For example this outlet goes to the living room,  meaning there is a connector in  the living room and a cable going  from there to this point here. Some of you  were asking if you really need a patch panel  and there are also you tubers saying that you don‘t  need it for small homes. 

In fact, the size of your  home is not the most important factor but rather  the number of devices that you want to wire. Of course - generally speaking - those  two parameters go somehow hand in hand.  In other words, if you only want to connect  2 or 4 devices then a patch panel would  probably be slight overkill – you can have  one but you don‘t have to. 

You could as well  just crimp a connector to the cable coming out  of the wall and plug it into the switch directly.  Let’s quickly go down to the lab in my basement  and have a look at how these cables can be crimped  If you want  to skip this, use the chapter or time markers.

Okay guys. This is what we have. This is the cable  coming out of the wall - in my case it’s a cat 5  cable and we want to connect to our ISP’s router.  I am showing the back side here. And in fact we  have that switch portion here. The LAN switch  portion here and we want to connect that cable  to this LAN switch portion. Of course - what we  do need in order to do that is, we need a an rj45  connector - a normal Ethernet connector like this  one. I am using unshielded cat5 cable for this.  

Depending on what type of cable you have you might  need to use a different type of connector here  and then we can just simply click it into  that connector here and we don’t need a  patch panel for that. So how do we do that?  

We need a special tool for this. The tool which  I am using here is really a very cheap tool.  I bought this many years ago. When I  was still a student I think ;-) and every  euro, every dollar every cent mattered. It  was very cheap like I don’t know three or  five euros at the time. What this does... If we  look at that connector which we will be using…  This connector has… they come in various  different types. There are connectors which  have a distance holder here that you put in  where the cable goes in so it makes sure  that the wires are at the right distance.  These ones are cheap variations. They don’t have  that. You just need to push the cable in and then  there is those little metal contacts here that  will actually make the contact with the wall  connector - with the connector of our router or  switch rather. 

And if we look at it - this one has  not yet been crimped and (I hope you can see that  on the camera) the metal blades actually stand out  of the plastic here. Once its crimped that  metal will be pushed into the plastic connector  and there is actually like I would say little  knifes or blades here inside. They will actually  be pushed onto the wires and this is where the  electric contact happens. So using that tool,  we will put the cable with the connector into the  tool. There is two things that will push here.  The first is that comb style piece here that  will push the little blades or connectors  into the little slots here and the other one  actually pushes that plastic part here further  down and that will actually hold the cable back  from getting disconnected when you pull on it.  

Now - again - this is a very cheap tool  and when I bought it I realized that this  comb part here actually didn’t go well into the  slots but it rather blocked on the little posts  between the slots. What i did to fix that is that  I sacrificed one connector. I then opened those  screws here - so I opened that part here with such  a tool. 

I opened those and made them loose, opened  those screws. Then the whole thing was moving and  then I pushed it into the connector and then I screwed it back on. Again - if you do have a tool  of a better quality - a more expensive tool - that  will save you a lot of hassle. But if you’re  only doing this once then a cheap tool might do.  But if you can let’s say borrow a more expensive  tool of higher quality that’s definitely worth  it. For this video I will use my cheap tool just  to show that it is feasible, that it can be done.  

First thing we do - we cut that part of  the cable that comes out of the isolation  so we have a proper ending here. And the nice  thing with these tools is that they have  two cutters here and that distance holder  that will actually cut the cable at the right  distance. Don’t cut too deep, just  a little bit without applying force.  Then you can rip off the isolation. Once more  in detail. Let me cut this one off. Once more.  Let’s get rid of the isolation here. Here’s the  two little cutters. I put the cable in and apply  very few pressure then turn it around a  little bit so that it cuts the isolation all  around and once I pull it back it should actually  rip off the isolation at the right distance.  

What’s that - about an inch or something like that  ? And if you look at the connector the cable needs  to actually go until the end of the connector  where those little nicer little metal  contacts are now the next thing we need to do is  we need to put the cables into the right order  and you remember there’s two different norms and  what you basically need to do you need to put them  into the same order like you do on the other side  of the cable so the connector part here needs to  have the same color coding like the connector on  the on the other side of the cable has in my case  that’s variation b meaning white orange  white green then comes blue and white blue  then comes green it takes a bit of experience and patience to  actually do that what I do from time to time I  just hold them together and move them like this  that flattens the cable because it needs to be  flat to go into the connector don’t worry too much  about the distance here for the time being we will cut the cable exceed in a second  and then white brown and brown  right. 

So they should be roughly in the right  order here you can also hold them and pull  the isolation back a little bit that helps  because once we push it in we will push it back  good so here we go I think we should have the  cables in the right order yes we do that’s perfect  and next thing we do we just cut the cable exceed a little bit just so that they are all at the same height or distance right  so just cut them off now you can see them nicely  forming a nice line and then  we can take that connector and push them into that connector and don’t worry  the cables the little wires will find their way through the little slots that are inside  you need to push them really hard because  what we want to achieve i hope you  can see that on the camera we want  the end of the wires to appear here at the  plastic at the plastic end of the connectors  I already pushed them in hard so here we go so  you can probably better see it from this side.

  

So they are really pushed in nicely and  then what we do we just put it into the tool from this side clip it in and now the tool this comb  shaped part of the tool will actually  push the metal contacts onto the wires and  create a contact with these cheap tools do not  hesitate to do it a couple of times here we goand here’s our connector and as you can see it  also pushed the plastic part onto the isolation  and that really holds it back from being  ripped out when you pull out the cable right  not too difficult totally feasible I admit  it takes a bit of patience it takes a bit  of experience it takes a bit of time but in other words if you if you buy those  connectors do not and you need to crimp two  don’t buy just two by ten right you might actually  waste a couple of those but it’s totally feasible.

 

So once we’ve done that we can then check  the connection with such a cable tester here  what you would do on one side of the connection  so where your wall outlet is with a little patch  cable you would connect that part of the tester to  the wall outlet let me just actually do simulate  that by putting the other end of the cable to  the tester and then the other end of the cable  which we’ve just crimped we put it into that part  of the tester and then it will check all the pairs  one pair after the other one and two three and six  four and five seven and eight and indicate with a  green led that the connection is  made in the right way that’s it. The second central component here is the  switch. This is the part of our installation  that interconnects all the Ethernet components,  that means our PCs, Laptops, Printers, Raspberry  Pis and so on if you want to wire them rather  than use Wi-Fi. The good thing with switches  is that they can be interconnected. 

So in other  words you can not only connect a PC or printer  or any other Ethernet device to a switch, but you  can also connect another switch. Let‘s actually  do this as a first step and connect the switch  portion of our ISPs router to the central switch.Mini Lab – connecting the switch portions all I do really is use one of these patch  cables or Ethernet cables and plug it into  the switch portion of my ISPs router. That’s  the yellow connectors here. Let me plug this  in and then put the router back to the wall.  The other end goes into the switch in the rack  and I can now connect not only four but  rather 16 or 24 devices to the network.  

While I am at this let me also connect the  outlet going to the kitchen, to the living  room and to the bathroom to the switch and hence  provide Ethernet network connection to the outlets  located in those rooms. As you can see, those  patch cables come in different colors and lengths  – it’s a question of taste rather than technical  functionality if you want them shorter or longer  or if you want to make them on your own  or if you want to buy them ready-made. So which devices would you typically want to  connect to your cabled or wired environment  rather than using them over Wi-Fi ? After all,  the commercials for Wi-Fi equipment promise  excellent coverage in the whole house and full  4K streaming bandwidth for everybody these days.  

Like so often – I’d say – remain realistic. The  commercials is one thing, the reality is another.  As a rule of thumb, I would say strive to use hard  wire rather than Wi-Fi for as many components as  possible. Especially those which use a large  bandwidth. Typical candidates for this are PCs  and Laptops which constantly live at one given  place such as your desk. Another good candidate  for cable or wire is the TV or everything that  streams Multimedia content. I mean, look at  it – every device that we remove from the Wi-Fi  frees up bandwidth for the real mobile devices  such as tablets or phones which do not have cable  connectors like Ethernet. So we don’t really have  a choice there. You may find many other devices  which you can actually connect to Ethernet  even if you maybe didn’t realize it until now  – such as your printer for example. 

You might  want to check if it has an Ethernet port. If you  take things even further, then you might even  find that you could actually make additional  devices network-capable using an additional  gateway such as a Raspberry Pi or an old router  running OpenWrt as long as it has a USB interface.  You could for example turn your 3D Printer into  a network printer by adding a Raspberry Pi which  runs Octoprint to it. Or you could connect that  old inkjet printer to a USB port of a router  and hence make it network-capable. Or add a  USB camera to the network by attaching it to  a router – watch my videos on those subjects  – I’ve put cards up here – just click on the  little info icon to watch them. 

For additional  components such as a NAS box (that is short for  Network Attached Storage and basically is a file  server) or a second access point we would do  exactly the same like for the other devices, that  means just connect them directly to the switch.  We either place them in the 19“ rack or we  connect them over the patch field if they  are located in another room. Cool, so now we  have our ISPs router connected to the ISP,  our Switches interconnected and the outlets in  the various rooms are connected with patch cables.