Network Cabling

as one of my first instructors once said it doesn't matter how many certifications you have it doesn't matter how advanced a senior engineer you are you will never you will never be above running cable I'm Eli the computer guy and today's class is network cabling today we're going to go over how to create path cables how to punch down cables into patch panels and into ports we're going to talk about toning cables so we can we can figure out what cable is what and a whole bunch of other things that go with with cabling no matter what you do in the computer world you never get away from cabling and I guess my instructor said it doesn't matter what level engineer you become you're always gonna have to run cable at some point I mean it's just it's just easier cabling is very easy to do I basically taught myself how to do cabling and I don't know 12 hours I sat down with a buddy of Mines books and test sets and figured out how to do cabling and then I was literally the next day at a client site ruining cable and everything worked okay so so don't be afraid don't be concerned cabling is exceedingly easy and it's just like everything else in computers if you do things properly then it's easy and it works fine if you go off on your own little tangent then everything it was to hell real quick so this class is now we're cabling and let's get into it so obviously if we're doing cabling the first thing that we need to talk about is is the cable itself the cable we are going to be using for for cabling for for running two different ports for creating patch panels etc generally when you buy cable in bulk you'll put it in a box like this and normally either comes in five hundred foot or 1000 foot lengths when I bought this at Home Depot I think a 500 foot box of cable was about fifty dollars and a thousand foot box of cable was somewhere around ninety dollars I think it was you can't buy shorter little bundles of cable but realistically if you're in the computer business at the very least just buy a 500 foot box of cable you'll be happier for it because one thing is if you do have to to run a length of cable there's nothing worse than doing it really really really long run and then right before you get to the end of your run you run out of cable because then you have to run the entire entire run again when we talk about the cable there are generally three types of cable we talk about when we talk about network cable there is something called a cat 3 cable or category 3 cable there is cat 5 cable category 5 cable or cat 6 cable category 6 cable basically cat 3 cable it was the original cable used for networking and its maximum speed is approximately 10 megabits per second you can still buy cat 3 cable when you go to Lowe's or Home Depot I would suggest that you never do for anything even if you're running telephone wires still don't buy cat 3 cable it's old its obsolete and I mean it's barely good enough to run your telephones off of the next type of cable is cat 5 cable this is the standard of the industry whenever you hear about networking cables most people will say cat 5 cable so if they say networking cable they may say cat network and cat5 is usually synonymous cat5 has been around Oh 10 or 15 years a long long time I've been using cat 5 cable the entire time I've been doing computers it's speeds will now go up to a gigabit per second so it's good enough for any almost any network you're gonna be running off of for the next 10 years so most people use cat 5 cable this is the cable that you normally use you will also hear a term cat 5e this cat 5e is a little bit better standard than cat 5 so I think most yeah most most cat 5 cable his cat 5e don't don't get that confused just cat 5 get the next level up is something called cat 6 cable cat 6 cable the main benefit with it is it's good enough you can actually do up to 10 gigabit per second transferring over it for short distances I don't know anybody that has any networking equipment good enough before 10 gigabit per second connections if you go to the store and they own all they have is cat 6 they don't have cat 5 you can buy cat 6 it's just as good for running network cable as cat 5 it's just a little more expensive because of course it's better if you want to save a few bucks just buy cat 5 so you can use cat 6 for today's networking equipment it it doesn't really matter one of the options you're going to see when you go to the store is you'll see the normal normal box of cable and then you'll see a box of cable that will say plenum ple and um I think how you spell it and that plenum cable is going to be five times more expensive than normal networking cable the reason is is plenum cable is used for running cable inside of ventilation ducts or in ceilings that act as ventilation so the reason is is the casing around normal cat 5 or cat cable is very very nasty stuff if this stuff starts burning it creates a horrible toxic fume that will do really bad things to you so the government and its wisdom does not want you putting this into ventilation units because if there is a fire all that nasty gas is gonna get spread around the building that's really horrible so plenum doesn't have the same problems you can run plenum cable through heating and cooling ducts and through ceilings that act as heating and cooling conduits that's why it's so much more expensive there's there something in the case it's either not toxic or it doesn't burn but the only reason you need plenum is if you are actually going to put the wire into into the ventilation pipes in to ventilation then you need play them and then you need to spend you know two hundred fifty dollars for bus plug cable if you are not going to be running a cable through ventilation ducts you do not need plan and therefore you need the $50 the last the last thing we need to talk about with the cable is you will hear the cable term too as twisted-pair if you open up the cable you have four pairs of twisted cable to see that that's kind of there we go so one two three four and you see the pair's and they are they're twisted together so these two come apart see you like that these are twisted the twists in this cabling act as shielding to prevent interfere and outside interference from getting on to the cable and disrupting the network traffic that is going on so these pair are purposely twisted around each other and this creates a shielding again to prevent prevent interfere coming in from the outside world why this is important for you is whenever you go to terminate your cable into a jack or into a plug you always want to keep the twists as close to that plug or to that jack as possible because that those twists act as the shield so if you have a long distance where you have undone the twists that that can that can mess with with the cable so if you don't like a long distance like this now interference can actually get on to to this cable to this wiring oh I'll show you more about this when we're actually punking these and two plugs into Jack's so the main part of this section is there's three types of cabling you'll see when you go to your notebook your local Lowe's or Best Buy it's cat3 cat5e or cat6 cabling cat3 you can still buy but don't it's obsolete been obsolete for ten years so please don't buy it for anything cat 5e is a networking wire the supports up to a gigabit Perkin gigabit per second connection speeds so this is most likely what you're going to buy when you when you're creating your own patch cables or wiring you're building cat6 is of course better than cat 5e because it can run up to 10 gigabits per second you pay more for that and realistically there's not a whole lot of networking equipment out there that can even do 10 gigabits per second so right at this point in time I wouldn't bother with it again you will see that you have an option for plenum cabling plenum it's a lot more expensive than normal cabling and the reason is is because you can run it inside heating and cooling ducts or inside or in ceilings that act as ventilation areas if you're going to run cable in those areas definitely do buy it you have to buy it if you don't buy it it's a bad thing but if you're not running wire in those areas then don't buy it because it's really expensive and the only the only benefit of plenum cabling is that it doesn't turn into a toxic brew when a fire happens so we've talked about the the cables now we need to talk about the jacks we need to talk about what your you're going to be putting your cable into all you have to remember is that network cabling a thermic cabling uses an rj45 jack or pluck so when you go into your Lowe's or Best Buy or go-to newegg.com or whatever else and you're buying a plug or you're buying a jack by rj45 rj45 that is what is used for networking equipment you will also see rj11 rj11 is used for telephones so the the small plugs the small plugs in the small ports those are our de 11 and that is used for telephones the the large the large plugs and large ports are are gave 45 and this is what is used for networking you can't you can't swap them so all all the needs to be said about the jacks it is rj45 when you when you go to Lowe's you go to Best Buy by rj45 and you'll be good to go now comes for the exciting part that all the geeks like a lot now is the time to buy more tools I think in one of my previous classes I said don't don't buy any tools until you need them well if you're going into cabling you need tools for cabling so uh so now we get into some of the cool little tools you get to buy the first thing that on the first warning or advice that I'll give you is when you go out to buy your tools buy good quality tools good quality tools will be more expensive than cheap quality tools but you need good tools if you go out there you buy the Chinese knockoff crap you're gonna make your life miserable you really are I'm gonna show you my crimper is my Preppers cost about forty five dollars to crimp down and create patch cables you can buy Kremers for ten dollars and then you're going to hate life every time you create a patch cable because again with all these you know whenever you deal with business or buying products there really is a reason that the $45 crimpers costs $45 and $10 crimpers cost $10 so when you go out to buy your tools buy good high-quality tools for network cabling you know between you and me he baleen is a ridiculous profit margin I mean just turn it over to run cables I mean it normally comes to about a hundred and fifty dollars per run so you know spending two or three hundred bucks to make sure you have the the best cabling equipment isn't that expensive so uh so buy the good stuff now the first tool that you're gonna need it is very low-tech but again you need buy a quality set and that is a pair of good electrician scissors good electrician scissors no not the place cool things if you go to Lowe's or Best Buy these cost about $15 I get ask you're like Oh $15 for scissors these are amazing they're razor-sharp they cut through cabling amazingly this stuff I mean if I want to like the cable I can just cut it that easily it cuts through coax cable without a problem without getting dull I can sit here and you know cut through a hundred lengths of coax cable and it will still be sharp so so the first thing you need to get is he is a good set of an electrician scissors the next thing you need is what I was talking about before a set of crimpers it'll look something vaguely like this these are weird mechanical things what these do is when you have the the plugin will show this one a creative patch cables basically you put the network cable wires into the plug you put all of that into here and you crimp it down and when you crimp it that crimps the plug into the cables there's a whole mechanism in here that makes this very easy to crimp cables together and because of that mechanism you're not gonna tire out your hand and you're not gonna hate life again if you buy the $10 version of these there's not that mechanism that makes it easy to crimp so you'll be using all of your strength to crimp those cables which won't be bad once or twice or three or four times but when you're doing a real networking job and your crimping down 50 connectors in a day I mean you get sort so so so so buy these are these are crimpers if you go to Lowe's or Home Depot like I say they'll run about somewhere between forty to fifty dollars the next thing is what is called the punch down tool this tool is used to punch down your network cable into the plug in two and two into this port so the cables go in and you push this down and it secures your your cable into your court properly when do you buy this these punch down tools always come with a minimum of one blade so the front of this the top of this is a blade that can be taken off if you're lucky and you're good when you buy it you will get both a 110 blade and a what's called a 66 blade sixty-six blades are used for telephone systems 110 blades are used for telephone systems and more importantly networking so when you go to buy your punchdown tool you need to make sure it comes with a one and ten blade if you buy your punchdown tool and it comes with a just a sixty six blade well then you still can push you down anything with networking you have to have that that 110 blade in order to punch down network wires if you go to buy this I like this one from from ideal ideal actually makes a lot of good network test equipment and tools again this is a 40 or $50 you know tool and you hear on a thing well I'm I got spent 40 or 50 dollars for this 12 one of the nice parts is this has an automatic it's a spring cutting mechanism so when I push this down as I'll show you later on to on to the plug to terminate the cable it will actually there's like a hammering mechanism that will hammer the the wire into place and then cut off the extra bits that's one of the reasons why you spend a few extra dollars this doesn't sound like a lot but like I say if you're doing doing a lot of network cabling and this makes a big difference again you can buy it you can buy punching down tools for as little as five dollars but they don't do the automatic cutting they're not nice and soft and easy to use you don't want them so so by an ideal or buy buy one of the nice punch down tools again they'll cost you forty fifty dollars but but it's well worth it when you do buy get the one ten blade at the minimum you can buy additional blades once you bump the punch down tool they cost about $15 apiece so whatever you do you have to get a 110 blade the next thing that you're going to need is a cable tester these come in many shapes and styles they must a look like this though your what your cable tester is gonna cost it again anywhere between 40 to $100 this is what you use to test your patch cables to make sure that everything is connected properly so you create your patch cable you plug one side into one side the other side to the other side and this tells you if you have done it properly have you have you messed up where the cables are is there a break in the line and etc so you need one of these cable testing devices the last tool that you need is a toning device this this device here what you do is you plug this unit into the network cable that you're dealing with and then with this with this little wand you can trace that cable throughout your building so let's say you you go to a client's site and all their cabling is already run they've already had 50 cables and all those 50 cables all go down to the patch panel but and then none of the cables are marked properly or maybe a few are marked and properly well what you can do is if you're trying to figure out what cable what you know this this jack where does this jack go to on that patch panel in the basement you can plug this device into the jack and then go down to the patch panel and use this toning device to figure out you know where where the cable is again will show this to you later this is a very very useful tool for cabling these can be a bit ridiculous in price for what they are normally I think it cost anywhere between about 16 at $80 but again an invaluable tool especially if you forget to mark cabling properly you use this tool to figure out where all your cables are going to these are these are the basic tools that you need for cabling again when you go out to buy them make sure you buy high quality tools if you buy the low quality cheap stuff you're gonna be miserable if you're the person sitting at home and you're only ever gonna make a few patch cables or punch down a couple of jacks now get fine buy the cheap stuff whatever if you're a professional if you're actually going to go out and punch down any number of cables if you buy the the garbage you're gonna hate yourself by the end of day today you really will so so those are the different tools make sure you buy quality ones when you are buying okay so now we get to the fun stuff so the first thing about to show you how to do is how to create a patch cable how to create a cable to connect your computer into the wall or a switch or switch into the patch panel etc the first thing we're going to do is show you how to create the pageant cable okay so what are we gonna need here you're going to need some rj45 jacks in order to create the patch cable so grab grab two of these you're going to need our fancy dancy wrappers we're going to need scissors we're going to need our cable tester and of course we're going to need cable so I'm gonna grab the scissors and since I'm just showing you how to create a patch cable we'll just create a really short one so you look at this just cuts right through it no problem so the first thing that we have to do is we have to get to the little cables that are inside here so in order to do that we use our scissors and we very gently cut the sheath around the cables that are inside you then pull now you want to be very careful because these are sharp scissors and if you you cut down too hard you press too hard you'll cut the little the little wires that are inside of here and then you'll you'll ruin your cable so here are the different pairs now to make it easy we untwist these twisted pair cables like so so now we have something to work with now these little little wires have to go into a very specific order when you put them into the jack so that order and what we'll put this in the class notes is you do white orange orange white green blue white blue green white brown brown get all those in the right order and then you kind of kind of grab them and you shake them back and forth say so you get them flat see because remember we're gonna have to shove all these little wires into into the bottom of this little jack so we get on to how we like them so we've got orange white orange green white blue blue white green brown white brown so that's the order that this is supposed to be we then use the cutting tool oops on the crimpers right here to cut these wires to make sure that they're they're completely even across if I tried to cut the wires using the scissors I may go diagonal or one wire might be longer than the other might be a problem all these little wires need to be the exact same length so I cut those so now they're all the exact same length then I grab this jack and I push them into the jack now I've been doing this a while so that seemed very easy simply trying to push these wires in the jack to me really pain in the butt it takes time and experience but once you know how to do it it's easy now notice there's no exposed wires here that this sheath goes all the way into the jack and then the wires are in there you don't want these wires hanging all the way out down here if you see that that's bad cabling so now that now that the wires are in the jack you just take this crimping tool and then all we do is we push the jack in and then we Crump down and they're just really tight you want to make sure this is tight because you don't want any of these wires to come loose later now once you've crimped it you pull the cable out and see now this is nice and tight on this is now this is now one piece it would be very difficult to pull this plug off this cable so we did we did one side let's do the other side so again you know this is the sheath we use our nice electrical scissors to cut around the outside of the sheath and then we pull the sheath off when we use the electrical scissors we are very very careful because if you press into tight you'll cut one of these little wires in here and if you cut one of those little wires well then you just ruined your cable now after we've removed the sheath we then untwist these twisted pair cables now the twisting remember that is used to shield the cables from outside interference twisting now we pull them so that they're straight so we can actually deal with them because I pull on them a lot to to lengthen them and straighten them out because a lot of times they're still curved and you know they're still on that that twisted pattern and that can be real pain to use okay so now we do orange white where's I'm fine so we do orange boy orange white green [Music] now can't be a mess in here let's once you get all these kid Wilson make sure they get them blue white blue green white brown straight out a little bit oops Oh so white orange orange like green blue white blue now one of the reasons I'm showing you how how long this can actually take is because it can take this long so if you're doing this and it feels like it's really being a pain in the butt don't worry because it really can be a pain in the butt so white orange or white green blue white blue green white brown brown this is this is the order that the wires ready no we put them in to a little crimper cutter and remember we use this crimper cutter because it will make sure all the wires are cut uniformly whereas if you try to use the scissors and they probably want to be cut that uniformly cut it off you then take the jack put the jack on now you push the cable all the way in whoops dad all right I saved it no big deal so you push this cable all the way in so that it's tight up in this jack and then use the crimper and then you crimp this tight tight together now we have a patch cable so we can use this to to connect a computer into the wall or connect a switch to a router etc the last thing that we need to do is actually test this cable to make sure we did it properly because although you take all this time and all this energy to do this you may have done something something wrong so you plug one end of the cable into your testing device and you plug the other end of your cable into your testing device and then you press whatever the test button is as you can see this passed so however your testing device says it as long as the cable passes then you're good to go if this if this says that the cable failed well then then you just have to redo it again so that's how you create a patch cable so we've just created our first pass cable that's pretty easy to do you just cut off the length of cable however long you need you cut off the sheath on one side make sure that all the wires are in order cut them off properly put the little jack on for the jacket the crimper crimp it and put it on the other side after you've done the other side you then put this into a little testing device a little wire tester and make sure that your cable passes always always always always always always test your cables you know I've been doing this a long time now I've been doing this eight years creating cables you can make really small mistakes that will make the cable not work properly so if you get cocky and you go oh I know how to do this and you start creating five or six or ten cables and you don't test them you may be sad to find out a large number of those cables are bad so whenever you do the cables always test them it takes five seconds to test the cable you'll you'll be happier that you did now the pattern of the little wires that I've showed you or do I orange white green blue white blue brown white brown whenever you're doing cabling and we'll show this to you when you're when you're punching down into the jack and in the next segment you're going to have the option between the a pattern and the B pattern so when you do cables or when you punch down cables and two jacks you have the option if you can see on here but for for a and for B and then this is the ridiculousness of the IT world a or B doesn't really matter the pattern doesn't make anything better and it doesn't make anything worse but you have to use the same pattern on all things so you don't want to punch down to create cable on one side that's a and the other side that's B in the United States we have defaulted to using the B pattern so whenever you go to to create a patch cable or to punch you down into a plug you always go with with the B pattern for how those cables are laid out like I say it's not any better or any worse than a it's simply this is what everybody in the u.s. does and so you always want to try to stay on the same standard so like I say the layout of the cables it will be in the class notes that go with this class so you don't have to remember them but just remember that there there are two different patterns that you can use whenever you punch down a cable you can either use a or B in the United States we use the B standard so just ok so now we're going to talk about how to punch down a cable and into into a jack into into a port so with this all we need is the port again our handy dandy electrical scissors our punch down tool with the 110 blade and of course ok so I'll bring you over here and I'll show you how this is done okay so here's the cable we're gonna act like this cable is coming out of the wall so somebody ran this cable from one place in the building to the other place in the building so we take the end of the cable and just like before we use our handy dandy electrical scissors and we cut off the end of the sheath just pull it off again we've got all these twisted pair cables in here and to make life easier when you just untwist all of them and then we straighten them out so I know what we're looking at so now we have the plug we have the jacket again if you look at the bottom of this this will tell you where to punch down the wires at and they give you four B and they give you four a so if you're doing the B you put blue green brown and white Brown if you're doing a you do blue orange brown and white Brown again technically there is there's no difference between B and a but everybody in the US always uses beam so whenever you're punching down into a jack or into a patch panel always use B if you use a in the United States unless you're told to you're gonna cause putt people problems so all you do is you take the wires that you need so blue and white blue go into the first sections here so and remember we want to keep the cable as the twist as close to where they get punched down as possible so we plug that in there and then we do I said he's doing cabling properly can be a pain in the butt so then we do white grain here and then we do white orange here and you just you just push these down snug enough so that the wires will stay that we're gonna be used a punch down tool in a second and then orange here and then on this side so blue we got green and then we have brown and then we have white Brown again there's no memorization in this I simply follow what I'm told to you do and I use B now all these wires are nice in here and you basically like so you just use your thumb to press them in hard enough that that they're not gonna go anywhere now this is where you use your punch down tool so you take your plug take the punch down tool and you put it on a hard surface make sure it's a hard service not your knee not your buddy's in the heart service because remember how I said this a punch it down tool it's got a little hammer in action when I punch it down see how that that snap that's pushing the wire into place and cutting off the ends at the exact same time see so now I have a nice neat a cable the end of the wire so so this is before hand this is after hand and say just and there you go now now your cable is terminated into a jack and it's it's it's that easy now in order to test this if you were going to test this you go back and you use your your cable tester now there's always on the cable testers there this is the main part and then what's called the remote now what you do is you um on one side you take your jack and then you take a little patch cable and you plug the patch cable into the jack and then you plug that patch cable into this remote device and then on the other side you plug a patch cable into the jack on the other side and then plug that patch cable into this testing device and then you test and see if everything is okay if everything's okay it will pass just like you passed for the patch cable if there's a problem well it'll it'll show you there's a failure like this is saying open and then you can you can figure that out so that that's that's all there is to to terminating a cable into this low plug now last fool you know how after you punch down the cable to the nice little jack and you're thinking okay I want to test this cable but I don't know where the end of this cable is this this this cable you know if it comes out of the wall but but but then where where does it go that's why you now use a toning device so again with this toning device you plug the the main unit in into into the plug and you turn turn this main unit on did this this sends a tone down the wire you then use your fancy little wand and the wand creates a noise when it hears the signal down the wire like this see so if I go this way you don't hear anything I'm by the wire you hear something so we've gone over how to create a patch cable and then how to punch down a network cable into a gap so really the only thing left is how to get a cable you know from point A to point B in building so if you have a server all the way in the back of the building and how do you how do you connect it at the computers up front to it well realistically a lot of this depends on the type of building you have really all you do all you do when you run cable is you literally just run the cable from point A to point B so you go from the patch panel where your server is and you run a cable all the way up to where your computers are up front if you're lucky enough to be in new construction you have things like drop ceilings and cable is incredibly easy to run in new construction because the drop ceilings you just open up a little panel in the ceiling you can you can run the cable really easily when you get the to the wall that you want to put the jack on you can just run the cable through the wall very easily open up a little hole and you're done simple if you're in some place like Baltimore if you're in an old city running cable can be a real pain in the butt because we don't have things like drop ceilings of my walls are plaster there's plaster and then there's brick and then there's nothing else so when you run wiring and old buildings a lot of times you have to use something like conduits so you actually have to secure a conduit to the wall and then you put the cable inside it kind of do it like so and then you you know you paint over the condo later so realistically though all you have to worry about is that you don't do anything stupid to the cable you can run and generally a cable for 300 meters or 330 feet and we'll still be good for network communications so that's approximately the farthest distance you can run a cable if you run it further than 300 meters or 330 feet the signal quality may degrade to the point that computers cannot use the signal so when you when you run the cable make sure that it's that's not over 100 meters or 330 feet the next thing is when you run the cable especially on very long runs you have to make sure that nothing happens to this cable if this cable gets crimped like this or something gets cut in the process of running of this cable this cable may become utterly worthless so again in some place like Baltimore I'd have run you know 90 meter runs you know through brick wall through cement walls over ceilings through ductwork etc and if at any time while I was while I was running that cable something had gotten cranked or caught or or whatever that entire run could have become worthless so when you were running the cable be very very very careful because again like I say any kinks and he twists any problems with this cable and the cable itself might become absolutely worthless so when you're running the cable I have a couple of tools that make life a lot easier for you now when you're trying to fish the network cable through walls or through conduits something that is very useful as this it's called fish tape this fish tape is actually a 75-foot fish tape with this this is a very stiff wire and so you can you can run this up through walls or through conduits to the place you want to pull the wire through so let's say you're you're at the bottom you're at the bottom level of a wall where you want the cable to come and and the wires come through the ceilings you can push this up through the wall tape the cage to the top of this and then very easily pull that cable down to where you want it to go I say this is great a lot of a lot of professional buildings will have conduit already built into their walls and so you can run this this this fish team all the way through the conduit grab the cable that you want to run and then just just pull pull it along I've actually used this on 50-foot conduits and it makes life really easy so this is a fish taper the next thing that's very useful these are useful for those drop ceilings we were talking about when you have when you have a large area that's that's it's only covered with with drop ceilings so you can run cable over the drop ceilings very easily this is these are called fish sticks these fish sticks they come sets of three generally but they're three feet fiberglass that pulls now what you do is you tape your cable to one end of one of these poles and then you can screw these poles together like so so you you tape to one side then you screw these poles together and then you push this through the drop ceiling and this creates a 9-foot little pole that are a stick that you can pull so you put this up into the drop ceiling and then you can even throw this a little distance and so you can very easily if you if you have like two people you can have one person sitting down like 15 feet from where you are on the drop ceiling you can secure your little cable to this fish stick you put this through the drop ceiling you throw it over to them they grab it you go down 15 feet and so on and so forth you can you can do a lot of cabling very quickly with drop ceiling and fish that's what the fish sticks are used for the last tool that you should have in your kit is this this is called a drywall saw what this is what this is good for is when you're putting the jacks into the wall so you've punched down your little cap and you want to put it into a nice little wall plate like this but you need to put a little hole in the drywall for your wall plate well a drywall saw all you do is you figure out where on the wall you want the wall plate to go you literally put the sharp end straight into the drywall you take your hand you hit it hard this will cut into the drywall and then you can just very easily cut your little hole out of the drywall and put your wall plate in this makes life a lot easier I've seen people try to use like exacto knives and all kinds of weird stuff to cut holes in drywall if you have this little ten dollar drywall saw you can you can cut your little holes in drywall and I don't know thirty seconds it's very easy to do so just remember when you're running your cables that can't be over 100 meters or 330 feet and alike you may go a little further and then but the signal degradation the the the network signal falls off after 100 meters so if you run a cable that's longer than 100 meters your your computers might not be able to talk over it when you are running the cable make sure you don't put any little kinks or bends or any little cuts or any of that stuff into the cable be very careful when you're running this cable because if you do can't get it krempe cut it while you're running it well then it's worthless and you just wasted the time you're gonna have to redo the run when you're trying to fish wire through walls using the fish tape is very very useful I think a fish they normally cost anywhere between twenty to thirty dollars when you're fishing cable over through drop ceiling fish sticks are absolutely amazing again they cost about $20 for a set and then when you're dealing with drywall make sure to get a drywall saw that this this so I said so that's a little bit about running cable that's really about all there is to to network cabling like I said in the beginning this is pretty easy stuff a lot of people get scared a lot of people get worried no I can't do it yeah literally I talked myself out of how to do this in at night and when I when I say I taught myself how to do this in a night I taught myself how to do this in the night and literally the next day I was the commercial property actually doing this it is that easy to do and like I say is if you're a consultant or a contractor this stuff is easy money generally when everything's said and done you're looking at a hundred and fifty dollars per run you get paid so that's nice profit I mean you take out something for cable you take out some for plugs and expenses and I mean here you're walking out with about a hundred and twenty dollars in labor fees for for running cable and I just taught you almost everything you need to know to run cable a couple of things to talk about before we wrap this up is the first thing with cabling is again cabling is very easy to do and as long as you follow the steps and you do everything right life is hippy Skippy life it like is great if you don't pay attention to what you're doing if you try to rush the process then you can make your life a living hell like I said all these little wires they have to be in the proper place when you when you crimp down and create the patch cables you have to pop you down the cables to the right places on the jacks when you run the cable you have to be very slow with how you do it to make sure that there aren't any kinks or crimps or any of that because if you do any of these things than all all the work is worthless you you have to redo everything that you just did the other thing is that neatness with wiring and with cabling really counts a lot of people try to rush through this process and they leave a mess behind use things like zip ties you know cable wires and such and make sure all your cabling looks nice mean it's it's orderly that when a technician comes in behind you that they will understand where all the cabling goes to I've seen a lot of people run cables I mean though those run a hundred different cables but then they won't market properly or it'll just be a mess and when a technician when a network engineer comes in they won't know what cable goes to what what it's doing etc so when you're running the cables just be very very neat like I say use zip ties to zip tie all the cables together make sure that the cables are even nice and pretty and if you do that life will be good for you one of the big things with cabling is that when you're dealing with a building you know you're doing a small office or even a larger office all of your cables should go back to one place generally we will have an infrastructure class where I'll talk about other things I'll talk about intermediate distribution facilities inside but for now if you're dealing with small buildings or small offices all the cables in the building and the offices should go back to one place is should go back to one server room you don't want five cables going here five cables going here five cables going here and then there's a switch in the middle and they all somehow connect together all the cables in the building when you're cabling the building should go back to one central area and when they go back to one central area they should all be punched down into a patch panel so all the patch panel is is it is a panel with a whole bunch of plugs on it so anywhere between 12 220 plus I mean lots of them and so all the cables go back and they should all get punched down into one big patch panel that patch panel should be marked with you know what cable goes to what a lot of people try to save money so they run all the cables maybe back to one and then they punch or they they just terminate the cables into plugs they don't they don't put the cables into a panic panel or they they put all the cables into a bunch of these these plugs instead of a patch panel remember there are going to be computer technicians coming in behind you patch panels are very easy to look at and when you look at them it's very easy to understand what's going on you can go okay here's a patch panel then this port here goes to this plug up there I understand what's going on if you walk into a room and you just have 30 of these staring at you or 50 of you know little wires coming down with these it gets very confusing and again in the computer business and the technology business the most expensive thing is labor so if I walk on to a client site and it takes me an hour to figure out what all these wires mean well I'm gonna build a client for an hour for me figuring out what all the wires mean and then I'll get down to fixing the problem so if all the wires go into a nice neat pac-man that I can walk in I can I can easily understand what's going on that is cheaper for the client and it makes everybody happier the one thing to it with the neatness and with the with the patch panel is all these cables that come in from all the building they should all be home runs what home runs mean is that the cable should be a single cable that goes from wherever the computer is or from the jack that the computer plugs into all the way down to the patch panel a lot of people you know they'll have extra cable around so they'll do let's say a 20-foot section of cable then they'll put that cable into a jack and then although they'll basically don't connect though they'll splice the network cable in the middle you don't you don't want to do that passionately there were a lot of problems that can happen in humid environments there there may be deterioration that will kill that that cable quicker than normal there may be some kind of stress that pulls the the connection apart the network cable doesn't work properly when you are running into cables you you you want a home run the cable from from the little port by the computer should be one the single cable that goes all the way down to the patch panel in the basement or in the server room it makes life a lot easier because there there can be a lot of problems like I say is if you're trying to splice the cables in the middle there could be humidity deterioration problems there could be pressure there could be something that causes that cable to fail that's that's what nobody wants so so this was the class on network cabling Oh again we went over patch cables we went over how to punch it down cables into plugs we talked about cat 3 cable cat 5 cable cat 6 cable again do not use cat 3 cable it exists but don't ever use it cat 5e cable is what you'll normally buy at Home Depot and such it cost you about $50 for 500 foot box of it or $90 per thousand foot box of it there is something called plenum cable remember plenum is a lot more expensive a normal cable and all it is used for is to run through air ducting so if you don't need to run cables through air ducting don't buy it and if you have to run cables through air ducting try to bypass it because it really is it's like five times as expensive as a normal box of cable we talked about the types of jacks so remember network cables use rj45 jacks telephone cables use rj11 so don't don't come by rj11 buy rj45 jacks and plugs the tools we talked about make sure you always buy good quality tools dumped by the few crap get a pair of good electrician scissors get a pair of crimpers get your punch down tool the one the 10-blade not the 66 blade you can get the 66 blade in addition to the 110 blade but for networking you need the 110 blade get the cable tester because you need to test the cables and then get that toner like I showed you you can use that toner to be able to trace cables again making patch cables I show you how to do it really simple and punching down cables and two jacks again it's very simple there are two standards for putting the wires into either the jack or the plug there's a or there is B technically it doesn't matter which one you use but when you're doing wiring you can only do one or the other you can one side cannot be egg and the other side B that doesn't work in the United States for whatever reason B is considered the standard so if you're in the United States use B you're somewhere else do whatever it is you guys do again cable runs can be up to a hundred meters or 330 feet don't make them any longer when you're when you're running the cable make sure there's no the crinks crumples cuts any of that because that'll just ruin everything fish tape is used to run cables through walls fish sticks are used to run cables and drop ceiling neatness counts always make sure to use a patch panel try to use a patch panel they cost anywhere between 50 to 150 dollars it really is it's worth the money at the end of the day and then when you are wiring a building if you're wiring a building all the cables should be home runs so it should be a single cable that runs all the way from the plug in the wall all the way back to the patch panel the last final bit of advice is if you're running a lot of cables from one room let's say all the way back to that little server room or patch panel you can run the cables together so like when I'm running cables all bundle eight cables I'll tape like eight cables together and tape all of that to the fish stick and run all eight cables at one so think about that is if you're wiring a building by a few boxes of network cable and then you can pull multiple cables at the same time so so like if if I'm running cables to a room I will tape all the wires that I'm running to that room together I'll pull them to one central area and then I'll break off whatever cables I need to run to the different parts of the room so I'll run all the cables let's say together to the beginning of the room then I'll pull two cables off to go to the plugs that go on this side of the room I'll pull two cables off to go to the plugs they go on this side of the room and you pull two cables off to go two plugs on this side of the room so you can plug multiple rooms you can pull multiple cables to to a single room I will save you a lot of time so well I hope you learned something in this class this this was a network cabling and I'm Eli the computer guy and I look forward to seeing you at the next class

Channel: Eli the Computer Guy

Views: 1,109,257

Keywords: Network, Cabling

Id: X-azkafrgrw

Length: 62min 39sec (3759 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 15 2011