Joining Cat 5 cable

[CortinaV8]

MarkBarl - Industry standard eh

To be honest i upgraded a warehouse network years back from cat5 to a mixture of cat6 and fiber, someone had cut one of the old cat5 cables in the past and soldered it back together, still "worked"

Be interesting to test the cable with a Fluke to see what different readings you get pre/post joining two together.

 

[dannyboi2003]

We've got choc-blocks joining the network link for the principal where i work lol! Contractors cut it by accident and we needed a quick fix, still working quite happily lol!

 

[mattylad]

Choc block connections work extremely well, by the time they fail the networks too old & needs replacing anyway

 

[TicklyT]

I've just found an old cat5 patch lead that's been in the bottom of my tool bag for a few years. When I urgently needed a crossover cable for a temporary patch that had to last about half an hour, I cut the plug and about 6" of cable off one end, stripped and twisted the conductors together in a crossover format and just bound the whole thing up in PVC tape to hold it together. No solder, no sleeving or anything.

Despite the very temporary nature of this lash-up, and rattling about in the back of my van for years, the thing still works!

I think that is just luck. Generally, any joints should be regarded as a potential fault liability, and should be avoided wherever possible.

In addition, remember Sodd's law:- The average time between component failures is inversely proportional to the difficulty of access to the component multiplied by the criticality of it's function.

 

[AMEdinburgh]

Thanks to everyone for all the replies. As usual, it's been both helpful, informative and interesting.

 

[Click-Sure]

Can I add, why not use jellies (as used by BT, Virgin and some alarm/access contractors) inside an enclosure. By far my favourite method, has always given good results.