Super-Networking Blog

So for the past couple of days I have been playing cable monkey at work. I found a hub in our server room that was running 12 servers with one uplink to a switch. Keep in mind this is a hub. Hubs should never be put on a business network now a days especially with servers plugged into them. So I got a Cisco 2960 48-port switch and ran 16 runs of new cable to replace the hub.

Everything was going pretty well, got the cable ran and the switch installed and running. I then started to terminate all of the cables which is never fun but typically not an issue. Today it was an issue, 75% of the cables I terminated were not testing out. I replaced the ends and still would not test out. It was typically the same pairs of wires that were having the issues too.

My first though besides me going crazy and forgetting how to cable was that the spool of cable I had used for the runs had bad cable in it. I also thought maybe the cable tester went bad. I was about to rule that out by testing some patch cables. After many attempts at trial and error I had a Sysadmin, who knew how to cable, check it out. He noticed that on the bad cables some of the metal prongs were not going down. He tries to reclamp down on the ends with no luck either. It appears that the crimpers I was using had gone bad, I wasted a lot of Cat 5 ends. Tomorrow I will get a new crimpers and hopefully be able to finish the job.

I did have a personal pair in my laptop bag but they are currently missing.