Stupid Salesclerk



  • My father bought a new TV, and it has an ethernet port. So we decided to hook it up to the router, which is in another room. Doing these things with my father is pretty fun because we got to break a couple walls open, so we could install new electroducts in them; we then used these and other already installed ducts in the apartment and a probe to pass a 30 ft. piece of LAN cable from the router to the wall in his bedroom, going through the duct beneath the floor of my bedroom. All in a day's work.

    The WTF happened when we went buying the cable. This conversation took place in the store:


    Dad: "We want a 30 feet piece of LAN cable."

    Salesclerk: "that'll be [I forgot the cost] for the cable, plus 3 USD for us to crimp the connectors on its ends." [I'm converting the values to USD]

    Dad: "No, just the cable, please. this cable is going through a wall, having the connectors right now would make it harder to pass it through the ducts."

    Salesclerk: "Oh, I see. Our staff can go to your home, then, and crimp the connectors for you, but that will cost 20 USD more for each pair of connectors."

    Dad: "WTf, 20 bucks for crimping two RJ45 heads? How much for a crimping wrench, then?"

    Salesclerk: "That's, huh, 25 USD. But I really recommend against buying it. You should have our technician go to your home instead, because surely you don't know the right order for these coloured wires."

    I already had the crimping wrench so we took neither the tool nor the tech service. Had my father not been there, I would have burst in anger and would probably give the salesclerk and his manager a sermon. How can you just tell a customer, straight to his face, that he simply doesn't know about something he intends to do?



  •  Not not mention that nowadays as long as the order of the wires is the same on each end it'll usually work.



  • To be fair, I wouldn't trust you with a crimping wrench either.

     

    Unless you were buying it from me.



  • @Volcanon said:

     Not not mention that nowadays as long as the order of the wires is the same on each end it'll usually work.

    That was different before?


  • @Volcanon said:

     Not not mention that nowadays as long as the order of the wires is the same on each end it'll usually work.

     

    Unless you're talking shitty ethnernet cards from the late 90's, any order, as long as they're the same, will work.  Hell, a crossover cable to my knowledge is completely useless nowadays.

     



  • @Master Chief said:

    @Volcanon said:

     Not not mention that nowadays as long as the order of the wires is the same on each end it'll usually work.

     

    Unless you're talking shitty ethnernet cards from the late 90's, any order, as long as they're the same, will work.  Hell, a crossover cable to my knowledge is completely useless nowadays.

     

    Every router and switch nowadays implements Auto-MDIX, so it doesn't matter if the cable is crossover or not, for them. You would only have any sort of problem if you tried to connect two computers directly through their ethernet ports, but...



  • @Renan said:

    have any sort of problem if you tried to connect two computers directly through their ethernet ports, but...

    I've done it before to connect a 360 to a netbook to use as a wireless bridge to install some updates.



  • @Sutherlands said:

    @Volcanon said:

    Not not mention that nowadays as long as the order of the wires is the same on each end it'll usually work.

    That was different before?

    They're twisted pairs. The twist is important, you need to make sure the correct (signal) wires get connected to the twist. The specified order is there because:

    1) It's the optimal order for the best signal over the longest range

    2) Since everybody uses it, if you have one un-crimped end, you can crimp the other end without having to guess which colors to match

    That said, he's right that it will "usually" work, just like patching a co-ax cable with chewing gum wrapper will "usually" work, but it's not hard to get it correct.

    @nexekho said:

    @Renan said:
    have any sort of problem if you tried to connect two computers directly through their ethernet ports, but...
    I've done it before to connect a 360 to a netbook to use as a wireless bridge to install some updates.

    I know from ahem experience that Xbox 360 network ports are auto-MDIX. I used to run mine using Internet Connection Sharing from a Windows XP PC using a normal cable.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Master Chief said:

    Hell, a crossover cable to my knowledge is completely useless nowadays.
    Can't they be used then? Or did you mean redundant?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Sutherlands said:

    @Volcanon said:

    Not not mention that nowadays as long as the order of the wires is the same on each end it'll usually work.

    That was different before?
    They're twisted pairs. The twist is important, you need to make sure the correct (signal) wires get connected to the twist. The specified order is there because:
    1) It's the optimal order for the best signal over the longest range
    2) Since everybody uses it, if you have one un-crimped end, you can crimp the other end without having to guess which colors to match

    That said, he's right that it will "usually" work, just like patching a co-ax cable with chewing gum wrapper will "usually" work, but it's not hard to get it correct.

    Ok, so you need to get the pairs together so that the interference will cancel out properly.  It will work, but poorly, otherwise?  But there hasn't been anything that has changed over the years to change how this is done... there's nothing new "nowadays", right?

    But yeah, I would never recommend to not follow the standard, for precisely your #2



  • @Sutherlands said:

    Ok, so you need to get the pairs together so that the interference will cancel out properly.  It will work, but poorly, otherwise?  But there hasn't been anything that has changed over the years to change how this is done... there's nothing new "nowadays", right?

    But yeah, I would never recommend to not follow the standard, for precisely your #2

    I was working with Cat5E at 100baseT speeds; if you're trying to run gigabit over Cat6, I'm guessing that you won't get jack shit unless you get your pairs correct, not for more than a few meters. Even Cat5E at a tenth the speed would crap-out after 40-50 meters if you got it wrong.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    2) Since everybody uses it, if you have one un-crimped end, you can crimp the other end without having to guess which colors to match

    Except you still have to guess if it's T568A or T568B.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I was working with Cat5E at 100baseT speeds; if you're trying to run gigabit over Cat6, I'm guessing that you won't get jack shit unless you get your pairs correct, not for more than a few meters. Even Cat5E at a tenth the speed would crap-out after 40-50 meters if you got it wrong.

    So, you're saying the order of the wiring in the last 1/2" of wire is going to affetct the signal over 100 meters?  Also, why is it that PIN 1 and 2 (transmit + and - ) Are perfectly fine to be together, but pin 3 and 6 (Recieve + and -) have top be seperated by two unused pairs?

    I really think the whole "specific coloring"/"patterning" is so as to retain the "reserve for telephony" wires.  In the past (1995?) I've run standard CAT5 over 300ft wired with OW~O~BW~B~GW~G~BRW~BR on both ends with no loss of signal or speed (Full Duplex/ 100 MB), as long as the end crimps were nice and solid.

    The only time I had issues was with poorly set crimps or if the order of the pairs was off.  Even with CAT6 and Gigabit later I found no degradation of signal.  Maybe I had better cables, or was lucky.



  • @Spectre said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    2) Since everybody uses it, if you have one un-crimped end, you can crimp the other end without having to guess which colors to match

    Except you still have to guess if it's T568A or T568B.

    I've never in my life seen A. Does it exist?

    @Medezark said:

    So, you're saying the order of the wiring in the last 1/2" of wire is going to affetct the signal over 100 meters?

    I'm talking about if you get a pair of signals that are supposed to go over a pair set of wires, and wire them up to an unpaired set of wires, yes it will affect your signal over 100 meters.

    If you keep the pairs intact but just wire them up in a different order, then you probably won't have any issues other than confusing the bejeesus out of whoever next encounters that cable.

    @Medezark said:

    Maybe I had better cables, or was lucky.

    It's quite possible the company I worked for at the time bought cheap shit.



  • @Renan said:

    Every router and switch nowadays implements Auto-MDIX, so it doesn't matter if the cable is crossover or not, for them. You would only have any sort of problem if you tried to connect two computers directly through their ethernet ports, but...

     

    Bridging wireless connections to computers without wireless is a time honored tradition when you're moving house and your otherwise nice network is a shambles.  Even so, direct connecting with even just one of the computers not being a shitty beige box from the 90s will work just fine.

     



  • @Renan said:

    Salesclerk: "that'll be [I forgot the cost] for the cable, plus 3 USD for us to crimp the connectors on its ends." [I'm converting the values to USD]
     

    I would have told them to crimp one end for $1.50 and then I would know the order. Only one end needs to be uncrimped to go through the wall. It would be interesting to hear their reaction.



  • @Volcanon said:

     Not not mention that nowadays as long as the order of the wires is the same on each end it'll usually work.

    Ugh, I hate guys like this :P I've been to more ppls houses to fix the order in the self-crimped cables than I can count. The 'same on each end'-part is never the problem. Hooking TX+ and SX- on the orange pair, SX+ on blue/white and TX- on brown (corlor are examples) is what gets to them. "I can only see half of the pages", "youtube keeps buffering", "I can't download anything over 325 kbyte" etc, the complaints aren't all that specific, but you get a _very_ flaky connection. TIA/EIA-568 (and indeed, I've never seen A used, always B) is not just there to annoy you :P

     



  • @Sutherlands said:

    To be fair, I wouldn't trust you with a crimping wrench either.

     

    Unless you were buying it from me.

    Personally I'd prefer a crimping wench.


  • @Medezark said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    I was working with Cat5E at 100baseT speeds; if you're trying to run gigabit over Cat6, I'm guessing that you won't get jack shit unless you get your pairs correct, not for more than a few meters. Even Cat5E at a tenth the speed would crap-out after 40-50 meters if you got it wrong.

    So, you're saying the order of the wiring in the last 1/2" of wire is going to affetct the signal over 100 meters?  Also, why is it that PIN 1 and 2 (transmit + and - ) Are perfectly fine to be together, but pin 3 and 6 (Recieve + and -) have top be seperated by two unused pairs?

    I really think the whole "specific coloring"/"patterning" is so as to retain the "reserve for telephony" wires.  In the past (1995?) I've run standard CAT5 over 300ft wired with OW~O~BW~B~GW~G~BRW~BR on both ends with no loss of signal or speed (Full Duplex/ 100 MB), as long as the end crimps were nice and solid.

    The pin ordering is that way so that the middle two pairs are backwards compatible with phone wiring.  Decent RJ45 jacks will even tolerate an RJ14 plug.  The difference between 568A and 568B is who decided what color goes where.  The long-standing telcom tradition is that pair #1 is blue, pair #2 is orange, pair #3 is green, and pair #4 is brown.  568A was designed by traditional phone people who grew up with the RJ14 concept that the center pair is #1 and the pair immeditely around them is #2.  Pairs #3 and #4 were arranged on either side because splitting them would require un-twisting too much cable.  568B was designed by people who grew up with ethernet and T1 which used only the center pair and one of the edge pairs.  These were #1 and #2 to them.  #3 and #4 were simply the other two.  So, this really isn't a difference in color designation, it's a difference in designating the order of pairs in the group.



  • @pnieuwkamp said:

    @Volcanon said:

     Not not mention that nowadays as long as the order of the wires is the same on each end it'll usually work.

    Ugh, I hate guys like this :P I've been to more ppls houses to fix the order in the self-crimped cables than I can count. The 'same on each end'-part is never the problem. Hooking TX+ and SX- on the orange pair, SX+ on blue/white and TX- on brown (corlor are examples) is what gets to them. "I can only see half of the pages", "youtube keeps buffering", "I can't download anything over 325 kbyte" etc, the complaints aren't all that specific, but you get a very flaky connection. TIA/EIA-568 (and indeed, I've never seen A used, always B) is not just there to annoy you :P
    A far bigger problem is people who take solid riser cable and crimp on jacks made only for stranded wire.  They usually fail after being jiggled a few times.



  • Interesting that the most dangerous home wiring fubar has not been mentioned....using non-plenum grade cable when plenum cable should be used to prevent toxic fumes in the event of overheating (typically from external sources)



  • @TheCPUWizard said:

    Interesting that the most dangerous home wiring fubar has not been mentioned....using non-plenum grade cable when plenum cable should be used to prevent toxic fumes in the event of overheating (typically from external sources)
    People rarely run cable in plenums in homes. However, I see this in small businesses all the time. A lot of sub-divided office spaces use the space above the drop ceiling as a cold air return plenum, and also run all of the communication wiring up there.



    Also, the risk of fire spreading due to wiring isn't as great in a residential setting due to the minimal number of cables and the short horizontal distance form end to end. Residential fire codes are much more concerned with fire going from floor to floor than fire spreading horizontally.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    if you're trying to run gigabit over Cat6, I'm guessing that you won't get jack shit unless you get your pairs correct
    You don't need Cat6 for gig - Cat5E is enough.



  • @Renan said:

    "surely you don't know the right order for these coloured wires."
     

    That's when you rattle off "orange/white, orange, green/white, blue, blue/white, green, brown/white, brown" just to see the look on his face.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Spectre said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    2) Since everybody uses it, if you have one un-crimped end, you can crimp the other end without having to guess which colors to match
    Except you still have to guess if it's T568A or T568B.
    I've never in my life seen A. Does it exist? @Medezark said:
    So, you're saying the order of the wiring in the last 1/2" of wire is going to affetct the signal over 100 meters?
    I'm talking about if you get a pair of signals that are supposed to go over a pair set of wires, and wire them up to an unpaired set of wires, yes it will affect your signal over 100 meters.

    If you keep the pairs intact but just wire them up in a different order, then you probably won't have any issues other than confusing the bejeesus out of whoever next encounters that cable. @Medezark said:

    Maybe I had better cables, or was lucky.
    It's quite possible the company I worked for at the time bought cheap shit.

    Ah! Although I had switched the order, and forgotten the center crossover, I had never actualy split up the twisted pairs.  I never wired Blue/White, Orange/White, Green/White, Brown/White, Blue, Orange, Green, Brown for example.  Probably because it's harder to crimp when the pairs are split.
    (I like a nice solid crimp, where the insulation/plastic covering is held tightly by the plug and their is just enough bare cable for the wires to hit the contacts.)

     



  • @Medezark said:

    Ah! Although I had switched the order, and forgotten the center crossover, I had never actualy split up the twisted pairs.  I never wired Blue/White, Orange/White, Green/White, Brown/White, Blue, Orange, Green, Brown for example.]

    Yes you did ...

    @Medezark said:

    I've run standard CAT5 over 300ft wired with OW~O~BW~B~GW~G~BRW~BR on both ends with no loss of signal or speed (Full Duplex/ 100 MB), as long as the end crimps were nice and solid.

    With this wiring sequence, you were using OW/O as one pair and BW/G as the other.  The Blue/White and Green wires are not twisted together, exposing the run to a lot of additional interference.



  • @Jaime said:

    @Medezark said:

    Ah! Although I had switched the order, and forgotten the center crossover, I had never actualy split up the twisted pairs.  I never wired Blue/White, Orange/White, Green/White, Brown/White, Blue, Orange, Green, Brown for example.]

    Yes you did ...

    @Medezark said:

    I've run standard CAT5 over 300ft wired with OW~O~BW~B~GW~G~BRW~BR on both ends with no loss of signal or speed (Full Duplex/ 100 MB), as long as the end crimps were nice and solid.

    With this wiring sequence, you were using OW/O as one pair and BW/G as the other.  The Blue/White and Green wires are not twisted together, exposing the run to a lot of additional interference.

     

    I think the lesson learned from reading these threads is that the salesman wasn't that stupid. 

    I really don't understand why a person wouldn't take the extra 30 seconds to do it right. Even if it works, what happens when 2 years later one of the ends gets cut off and has to be replaced? If you KNOW you did it correctly, you don't have to go search down the other end to see how it was done.

    As a general rule, different is only okay if it is better.

     



  • @Buffalo said:

    @Renan said:

    "surely you don't know the right order for these coloured wires."
     

    That's when you rattle off "orange/white, orange, green/white, blue, blue/white, green, brown/white, brown" just to see the look on his face.

     

    It's even better if you can sing it.

     



  • @Rick said:

    I think the lesson learned from reading these threads is that the salesman wasn't that stupid.

    Nah, the lesson here is don't run cable through walls and crimp ends on them at all. The salesman's idea was almost as stupid as the stupidest post in this thread. The right way to do it is to put proper jacks on them -- in wall plates or patch panels preferably. Jacks are already color coded and don't even really give you an opportunity to be creative with color coding since the wire-to-position relationship is opaque.



  • @Jaime said:

    @Rick said:
    I think the lesson learned from reading these threads is that the salesman wasn't that stupid.

    Nah, the lesson here is don't run cable through walls and crimp ends on them at all. The salesman's idea was almost as stupid as the stupidest post in this thread. The right way to do it is to put proper jacks on them -- in wall plates or patch panels preferably. Jacks are already color coded and don't even really give you an opportunity to be creative with color coding since the wire-to-position relationship is opaque.

    Have to agree, if only for the sake that an ethernet wall jack looks about 500% less white trash than cables going through holes/vents in walls.



  •  The downside is that you need twice as many cables, so you'll be crimpin' anyway.



  • @Renan said:

    @Master Chief said:
    @Volcanon said:
    Not not mention that nowadays as long as the order of the wires is the same on each end it'll usually work.

    Unless you're talking shitty ethnernet cards from the late 90's, any order, as long as they're the same, will work. Hell, a crossover cable to my knowledge is completely useless nowadays.


    Every router and switch nowadays [b]except those expensive Cisco ones[/b] implements Auto-MDIX, so it doesn't matter if the cable is crossover or not, for them. You would only have any sort of problem if you tried to connect two computers directly through their ethernet ports, but...

    FTFY



  • @dhromed said:

     The downside is that you need twice as many cables, so you'll be crimpin' anyway.


    You want it done fast, or right?



  • @Master Chief said:

    You want it done fast, or right?
     

    I absolutely agree that wall plugs look the very best, but it doesn't prevent crimping (unless you buy exact lengths of cable, of course).

    I'm actually in this situation myself. The previous tenant twice removed put a hole in the wall, threw some cables through, and pasted up all around the cables. It looks like the shoddiest job and's pretty much unmaintainable. My idea is to make it a clean un-bulletlike hole with enough room to pull/push a connector through. I'm not very toolmanlike, though, so I'll need some help and advice when I tackle it.



  • @dhromed said:

     The downside is that you need twice as many cables, so you'll be crimpin' anyway.

    7 ft Cat5e patch cables are $25 for 10 with 2-day shipping at monoprice.com.  How many cables would you have to make by hand to break even?


  • @dhromed said:

     

    I absolutely agree that wall plugs look the very best, but it doesn't prevent crimping (unless you buy exact lengths of cable, of course).

    I'm actually in this situation myself. The previous tenant twice removed put a hole in the wall, threw some cables through, and pasted up all around the cables. It looks like the shoddiest job and's pretty much unmaintainable. My idea is to make it a clean un-bulletlike hole with enough room to pull/push a connector through. I'm not very toolmanlike, though, so I'll need some help and advice when I tackle it.

    The bestest thing in the whole-wide-worlded about the Interwebs is that it has a "How To" for EVERYTHINGS! HTH.



  • @Jaime said:

    How many cables would you have to make by hand to break even?
    I'm not sure what you mean to say.

    That it's cheaper or more expensive to buy shitty cables that won't even reach across the room?



  • @dhromed said:

    @Jaime said:

    How many cables would you have to make by hand to break even?
    I'm not sure what you mean to say.

    That it's cheaper or more expensive to buy shitty cables that won't even reach across the room?

    A. Why would you put the jack across the room from where you need it?

    B. Monoprice cables are just fine.  I'm sure they show worse numbers on somebody's ten thousand dollar fluke tester, but it is highly unlikely to show up as a problem.  Even if it does, throw the cable away and plug in a new one.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @dhromed said:

    @Jaime said:

    How many cables would you have to make by hand to break even?
    I'm not sure what you mean to say.

    That it's cheaper or more expensive to buy shitty cables that won't even reach across the room?

     

    I think he means "than buying a box of wall cable, some jack heads, and a crimper"



  • @dhromed said:

    @Master Chief said:

    You want it done fast, or right?
     

    I absolutely agree that wall plugs look the very best, but it doesn't prevent crimping (unless you buy exact lengths of cable, of course).

    I'm actually in this situation myself. The previous tenant twice removed put a hole in the wall, threw some cables through, and pasted up all around the cables. It looks like the shoddiest job and's pretty much unmaintainable. My idea is to make it a clean un-bulletlike hole with enough room to pull/push a connector through. I'm not very toolmanlike, though, so I'll need some help and advice when I tackle it.

    We did the wall plugs too. We have plugs for ethernet in three rooms now. But my point wasn't this. My point is that the salesclerk just simply assumed we didn't know shit about ethernet, even though he's the one who doesn't know shit (doesn't even know what a LAN is). And the technician who would do the job had most probably just memorized the sequence, and probably doesn't know why the wires are twisted inside the cable.


  • Garbage Person

    @Jaime said:

    @dhromed said:

     The downside is that you need twice as many cables, so you'll be crimpin' anyway.

    7 ft Cat5e patch cables are $25 for 10 with 2-day shipping at monoprice.com.  How many cables would you have to make by hand to break even?
    Four. Out of a potential per-box-yield of 142. If your time is worthless, anyway. It's too early in the morning to figure out the maths to work that out.



  • @Medezark said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    I was working with Cat5E at 100baseT speeds; if you're trying to run gigabit over Cat6, I'm guessing that you won't get jack shit unless you get your pairs correct, not for more than a few meters. Even Cat5E at a tenth the speed would crap-out after 40-50 meters if you got it wrong.

    So, you're saying the order of the wiring in the last 1/2" of wire is going to affetct the signal over 100 meters?  Also, why is it that PIN 1 and 2 (transmit + and - ) Are perfectly fine to be together, but pin 3 and 6 (Recieve + and -) have top be seperated by two unused pairs?

    I really think the whole "specific coloring"/"patterning" is so as to retain the "reserve for telephony" wires.  In the past (1995?) I've run standard CAT5 over 300ft wired with OW~O~BW~B~GW~G~BRW~BR on both ends with no loss of signal or speed (Full Duplex/ 100 MB), as long as the end crimps were nice and solid.

    The only time I had issues was with poorly set crimps or if the order of the pairs was off.  Even with CAT6 and Gigabit later I found no degradation of signal.  Maybe I had better cables, or was lucky.

    It doesn't matter what colors are used as long as differential pairs (TX+/TX-, RX+/RX-) are each twisted together. It will most definitely not work over any appreciable length (feets for gbit, dozens of feet for 100mbit) if you "split" the pairs -- if the differential pairs are not running, each, on a twisted pair of wires inside of the cable.

    Oh, by "not working" I mean it won't pass any sort of cable certification tests where transmission parameters are measured. If all you have to 'test' your connection is the fact that the browser connects to tdwtf, then I guess you are TRWTF :)


Log in to reply