cat 5 / 6 coupler? ( plug 2 cables together to get extra length? )

[Soundguy]

Honestly never tried this. Just wondering. is there such a beast as a cat 5/6 coupler. IE.. say I have a cat 5 cable that is 10' too short, can i get a couple and a 10' cable and extend it? I assume something passive.. like an rj style coupler uesd on a telco cord??

 

[orezok]

It's a RJ45 coupler.

 

[Soundguy]

It's a RJ45 coupler.

and works fine? won't interrup network signals.. no lines crossing..e tc?

 

[Wood_Butcher_Dav]

Look carefully at the RJ45 coupler, some are straight and some are twist (1 to 1, 2 to 2 etc or 1 to 8, 2 to 7 etc). A few years ago had some issues, sort of like the difference between RJ11 and RJ12.

Dave

 

[coveredbridge]

I have one that I've used in my home network for years. Never had a problem.

 

[aczlan]

and works fine? won't interrup network signals.. no lines crossing..e tc?

I have used various straight through F-F RJ45 couplers on CAT5, CAT5e and CAT6 cables with no ill effects.

Aaron Z

 

[Soundguy]

thanks guys.

I have a cat 5 run that terminates into a cable.. not a jack .. and the cable is about a 2' stub out of the wall. and the cat 5 device needs to set at least 5' away.. thus i need a jumper. OR i need to totally rearange everything and make a special shelf on the wall.

 

[aczlan]

Or cut the plug off, install a jack, then plug a cable directly in.

Aaron Z

 

[EarPlug]

The RJ-45 coupler will work up to a point. CAT 5/6 cables are constructed with different twist rates on each pair within the cables. These twist rates are very precise and critical to preventing interference among the pairs. The coupler will compromise the the pair twist. If it is a short run (50 ft) it should not cause much if any trouble. If it is a real long run 200 ft plus may have issues.

 

[Soundguy]

The RJ-45 coupler will work up to a point. CAT 5/6 cables are constructed with different twist rates on each pair within the cables. These twist rates are very precise and critical to preventing interference among the pairs. The coupler will compromise the the pair twist. If it is a short run (50 ft) it should not cause much if any trouble. If it is a real long run 200 ft plus may have issues.

the total run is likey 150-200 feet. but the union i want to use would only be adding another few feet. say 5' at most..

 

[Soundguy]

Or cut the plug off, install a jack, then plug a cable directly in.

Aaron Z

not my equipment .. so i don't think they want me to cut their stuff. but if it was mine.. then yeah.. a jack would have been a nice thing to install instead of a stub end with a male rj45 on it.

 

[EarPlug]

The overall legnth is the issue not where in the run it is placed. Even a badly kinked cable can cause problems. Also Gigabit trasnmission is more critiacal versus 10/100.

Use a specific Cat 5 Coupler to be safe. Cheap enough to try. If it doesn't work then you will need to re-run the cable. Most likely the only problem you would have would be slower throughput on the cable.

 

[EarPlug]

You could also put a 4 Port switch on the cable then you would have 3 extra ports at that location.

 

[MossRoad]

thanks guys.

I have a cat 5 run that terminates into a cable.. not a jack .. and the cable is about a 2' stub out of the wall. and the cat 5 device needs to set at least 5' away.. thus i need a jumper. OR i need to totally rearange everything and make a special shelf on the wall.

We have litterally hundreds of those in use in our facility due to almost the exact same issue. Ours are salvaged from old silver satin flat cable main-frame days and are rated at CAT3, but we get gigabit speed through them with no problems.

A long time ago we used to have 4 DEC PDP11's. Three live and one spare. Each unit supported about 250+ VT173 terminals. They were wired with the flat 8 conductor cables with RJ45 connectors on the ends into patch bays. From the spare unit, we ran 256 flat cables in 4 bundles to the center of the room under the floor with those RJ45-RJ45 adapters on the end. Poor man's patch bay. When one of the live systems would die (and they did) we'd pop the floor, pull out the bundles over to the dead system, move the connections from the dead system to the bundles, fire up and go. We never threw out the connectors when the PDPs were decomissioned.

Over the years, our building was wired on-the-cheap. They ran CAT5 cables into cubicles and just terminated them with enough cable to reach the PCs rather than putting a jack in each cube. It saved them about 5 bucks a cube, which was a lot on paper. However, decades go by, cubicles get re-arranged, distances change and all of a sudden you're faced with spending 5 bucks a cube again or using those RJ45-RJ45 splicers that you already have. No more money spent, so we did it that way since we already had them.

I would suggest, if this is a one time deal, go ahead and use one of the adapters. But if I had my preferences I'd rather add a jack to the wall and use the proper length patch cable from the wall jack to the computer. It's just the right way to do it.

 

[Soundguy]

Cheap enough to try. If it doesn't work then you will need to re-run the cable. .

kinda hard to do.. it's in the wall / ceiling of a business... not laying on the floor.

 

[Soundguy]

You could also put a 4 Port switch on the cable then you would have 3 extra ports at that location.

100% not possible. it's not a network.. it's a device that simply uses cat 5/6 to connect it's 2 halves over distance.

 

[Soundguy]

i hear ya. this building was wired similarly... lots of runs of cat 5/6 cable to many locations.. not terminated as jacks, but as male ends. The bulk of the runs are for HDMI over cat 5 using converters. 2 cat 5 cables and a converter at each end and you can pump an hdmi video signal inone end. then at the other end, depending on which converter you use.. you can get hdmi or vga or component out, to drive whatever device you have. tv, projector.. computer monitor..e tc. Our video system was patch ang go built and added onto for years.. kludgy in my opinion.. but i did not spec it.. and the original specs have been way exceeded.

currently we need to run some digital audio from one location to another.. we hav ehte xmitter in one location and the rcvr in another, and it uses cat5/6 to connect thru.. we were in a pinch.. but.. i noticed one of those pair of hdmi to cat 5 lines laying there 'near' wher emy rcvr needs to be... and terminating in near the same place as my xmitter... we used to send video thru to that location but no longer do.. in fact. we stole the cat5 to hdmi converters off that pair of cables 2m ago to use them as repalcements for 2 units that failed. thus we now have 2 piece of unused cat5/6 in near exact place fo rhte rcvr / xmitter. I just need one piece to be a couple feed longer to set the rcvr atop a rack.. current stub line is a few feet short.. if i can't extend it.. I will need to build a shelf that hovers over a patchbay of hdmi to cat 5 converters that feeds about 10 other zones in the building, from the 2 splitter banks there.

pretty much an idea situation for me to re-task that piece of cat 5/6 ( and have a spare ), and install that digital audio rcvr/xmitter...

We have litterally hundreds of those in use in our facility due to almost the exact same issue. Ours are salvaged from old silver satin flat cable main-frame days and are rated at CAT3, but we get gigabit speed through them with no problems.

A long time ago we used to have 4 DEC PDP11's. Three live and one spare. Each unit supported about 250+ VT173 terminals. They were wired with the flat 8 conductor cables with RJ45 connectors on the ends into patch bays. From the spare unit, we ran 256 flat cables in 4 bundles to the center of the room under the floor with those RJ45-RJ45 adapters on the end. Poor man's patch bay. When one of the live systems would die (and they did) we'd pop the floor, pull out the bundles over to the dead system, move the connections from the dead system to the bundles, fire up and go. We never threw out the connectors when the PDPs were decomissioned.

Over the years, our building was wired on-the-cheap. They ran CAT5 cables into cubicles and just terminated them with enough cable to reach the PCs rather than putting a jack in each cube. It saved them about 5 bucks a cube, which was a lot on paper. However, decades go by, cubicles get re-arranged, distances change and all of a sudden you're faced with spending 5 bucks a cube again or using those RJ45-RJ45 splicers that you already have. No more money spent, so we did it that way since we already had them.

I would suggest, if this is a one time deal, go ahead and use one of the adapters. But if I had my preferences I'd rather add a jack to the wall and use the proper length patch cable from the wall jack to the computer. It's just the right way to do it.

 

[MossRoad]

Sounds like a project! :laughing:

We tried to convince our owner several times to just let us wire the entire building one time correctly instead of adding piecemeal. They said nope. Then, for the next 10-15 years they would see us several times a month removing ceiling tiles, pulling wire, duplicating the labor to pull the wires 30 times a year for 10-15 years, which added up to about 300 runs. Yikes! We figure it takes about $12 worth of wire, $20 worth of connections at each end and two hours of labor to do a single run anywhere in our building. So, depending on who's pulling, say $30-40 dollars in labor. So, 30+12+20=$62.00 for one run. We could pull a dozen cables to the same area for the same labor if we did it all at once, saving them about 550 hours of labor over time. YIKES!

 

[Soundguy]

EXACT same deal here.

costs very little to run 2 cat 5 cables on a pull vs one. if we need 1 thay have us run one. I like having a spare.. or 3 or 5

Sounds like a project! :laughing:

We tried to convince our owner several times to just let us wire the entire building one time correctly instead of adding piecemeal. They said nope. Then, for the next 10-15 years they would see us several times a month removing ceiling tiles, pulling wire, duplicating the labor to pull the wires 30 times a year for 10-15 years, which added up to about 300 runs. Yikes! We figure it takes about $12 worth of wire, $20 worth of connections at each end and two hours of labor to do a single run anywhere in our building. So, depending on who's pulling, say $30-40 dollars in labor. So, 30+12+20=$62.00 for one run. We could pull a dozen cables to the same area for the same labor if we did it all at once, saving them about 550 hours of labor over time. YIKES!

 

[MossRoad]

EXACT same deal here.

costs very little to run 2 cat 5 cables on a pull vs one. if we need 1 thay have us run one. I like having a spare.. or 3 or 5

We finally got them to let us run three CAT5s on each run. Two for data and one for phone. That's worked OK over the last few years, but it would have been more cost-effective to do it all at once. Hindsight is 20-20 of course, but we did have a glimpse into the future back then and they should have seen it coming.