When Cabling Fails Part 2

We get hands-on with return loss, impedance, and wiremap faults to show how small physical choices in cable and connectors turn into measurable performance problems. We also share practical ways to use LinkWare and HDTDR diagnostics so you can stop guessing, pinpoint faults faster, and deliver results clients will actually accept. 

• using certification testers proactively to validate jacks, patch panels, and install practices before full deployment 
• why LinkWare files beat screenshots for troubleshooting and trend spotting across large projects 
• what return loss measures and how impedance changes create reflections that hurt gig and multi-gig performance 
• why matching cable and connectors as a system improves impedance consistency and throughput margin 
• real-world failure example using screw-terminal “Category” wall plates and how HDTDR reveals end spikes 
• how over-cinched zip ties and regular spacing distort cable geometry and push return loss into marginal territory 
• the “star pass” problem and how codes, standards, best practices, manufacturer rules, and contracts collide 
• using HDTDR to localize damage and distinguish return loss issues from crosstalk behavior 
• wiremap fault walkthroughs for opens, shorts, and rolled pairs plus what distance-to-fault really means 
• why cheap wiremap testers can miss split pairs and create hard-to-explain network problems 
• pass-through connector controversy framed as crimper fit, blade maintenance, and workmanship 
• why field-terminated IDC connectors can reduce bad crimps and resistance imbalance within a pair 

if you have not joined the Let's Talk Cabling crew, do it. Link below. 
starting October, we're flipping the schedule. We're going to start doing live streams on Monday night at 6 p.m. And we're going to start doing the podcast on Wednesday night. 
We'll see you in Philly at Texgiving October 23rd through the 25th. 
Email Chuck at advertising at letstalkcabling.com and let's connect your brand to the right audience today. 

Transcript

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Welcome And Quick Announcements

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hey everybody, this is Editing Job. Welcome you to part two of the testing series with Flute Tesla with Mike Banaki. This episode, we talk about impedance, return loss. We even go through some wire map tests. A couple quick things before we get back into the program. Number one, if you have not joined the Let's Talk Cabling crew, do it. Link below. We do a once-a-month Zoom call, and we just had one just recently, last week, talked about some really cool stuff. Join on and do that. And secondly, starting October, we're flipping the schedule. Okay. We're going to start doing live streams on Monday night at 6 p.m. And we're going to start doing the podcast on Wednesday night. So mark your calendar. So don't show up Wednesday night trying to be on a live stream. Now let's get back to editing this show.

Using Test Gear Before Install

SPEAKER_02 1:09

And well, that's why I tell people that have been to class. And that is, you know, I teach, I do the classes a few times a month. But when I'm not teaching, you know, I'm out here building bag cables, I'm answering questions. Yeah, I want to make sure everyone's successful that's gone through the training. And um we all come across things we've never seen before. I have my my people that I call, you know, like Jim Davis over at Fluke Networks. I mean, Jim is uh, you know, it's and it's especially fun. I don't do you know Randy Ware. No, I don't. So Randy was one of the guys that was with Fluke Networks from the very beginning. And Randy lives about four miles from me and he's retired. And so he uh when he's not fishing, he comes over and we get together for lunch once a month, and he fills me in on all the history of this stuff. And so having somebody that has seen all of it and forgotten more than we'll ever know. Uh, you know, it's uh the the stories are good because sometime you're gonna come across something and go, you gotta know you gotta know where you came from in order to figure out some some things that are happening now.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

That's that's an absolute fact. Absolute fact.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Now, I'll tell you one other thing that I don't see a lot of folks do that we have this laboratory grade piece of equipment sitting here. In fact, there are things we can do with this tool that cable manufacturers do with it that just go way beyond anything that you would think it could do. And I see like when we get into alien crosstalk and so on, that you don't want to find out after you've installed everything that the jacks you selected have a lot of a crosstalk problem, or the patch panel does. So there's an opportunity here to use this equipment to make sure that your installation practices are spot on before you ever install any cable. Get some jacks, get a cable, punch it down, see how it works. Try laying it down differently. Yeah, find out what gives you the lowest crosstalk and the lowest return loss, and then that is what you want to do.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

Right. One of the good things that Fluke has gone for them is their linkware software. I think it is it is the premium software looking at it from a project manager or maybe even as a manufacturer evaluating hundreds of thousands of test results a year. It helps me to identify quickly and easily by just looking at the database from different points of view to narrow down what problems are. And I'm not sure. I don't know if the top of my head if the other manufacturers have anything anywhere near what linkware is, but I know that it's you you can't argue with it. It's it it's absolutely absolutely helps with with troubleshooting stuff.

LinkWare Files For Real Troubleshooting

SPEAKER_03 3:59

Let's shift our conversation.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Because you know, the first thing I'll always get is somebody will send me a picture. Mike, what's wrong with this? I'll say, you know, send me the linkware file. And if you send me the linkware file, then I can get I can take a look at it. But it's uh so in fact I put together a video of how to take the results from the versive up to linkware live, then down to linkware PC to generate the FLW file. Right. So that way somebody can be out in the field and you don't even have to bring the tester back in. All they need is an internet connection to upload those results.

Texgiving Community Volunteer Project

SPEAKER_00 4:48

You should join us at Textgiving this year. You get to be a part of something bigger than just another industry event. Textgiving brings together technology professionals, manufacturers, vendors, and volunteers from across North America to use their skills for real impact. This year we're heading to Philadelphia Toronto McDonald's house, and we're shaping up to be our biggest and most ambitious project yet. Together, we'll help create critical technology infrastructure, including networking, security, access control, and more, so they can stay focused on supporting families when they need it most. But it's not just about giving back, it's also an incredible opportunity to network, learn, and work side by side with some of the best people in the industry. Whether you're brand new to the field or seasoned pro, you'll make connections, share knowledge, and get hands-on experience. And that is what tech knowledge is all about: community over competition. Nearly a million dollars in product and services have already been donated through our TextGiving initiative. So come join us, bring your skills, meet amazing people, and be a part of something that makes a real difference. We'll see you in Philly at Texgiving October 23rd through the 25th.

Return Loss And Impedance Basics

SPEAKER_03 5:54

Let's shift our conversation to return loss. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_03 5:59

So, what are we actually measuring when we're measuring return loss?

SPEAKER_02 6:03

So, with return loss, what we're looking at is we are looking at how much of the signals coming back to us on the same pair. So we send in there's two different types of signals when we're testing. We work with there's differential mode and common mode. Differential mode is our data, common mode is our noise. So when we're testing, we're using both of those types of signals depending on the test we're doing. So with return loss, what we're doing is we're sending a differential mode signal into a pair, we're looking at how much of that differential mode signal comes back. And that reflection, that return of that signal is caused by changes in impedance along the length of the cable. And I was, you know, when I first started getting into all this, I actually had Randy and Jim Davis over here. They were having lunch and we were talking, do it, looking, recording some videos and stuff. I said, okay, give me some good examples of return loss. It's nice having the two of the smartest people you know sitting there telling you this stuff. And what it comes down to is the geometry of the cable and really the distance between the two conductors in the same pair. So what we want in a perfect world is that when we twist those together, those two conductors are always exactly the same distance from each other. And if they are, we're gonna have very consistent impedance along the length of that cable. Now, when we talk about the cable, we talk about 100 ohm cable, and that's a hundred ohm nominal impedance. So we could there's a range in there that we could fall into. So I might be at 95 for my cable, but I could have a connector that's 105, and we're gonna see a little bit of a difference in impedance there. And when our signal hits that, that change in impedance is gonna cause some of that signal to come back to us. And the amount of signal that comes back is is significant, and it plays a big part in how our applications are gonna perform across that cable. Now, back in the 10100 days, I'm sending on one pair and I'm receiving on the other pair, and it's not, it doesn't impact as much. But now with gig and above, I am sending on all four pairs and I'm receiving on all four pairs at the same time. So if I've got a signal coming back to me on the same pairs that I'm sending and receiving on, that can start causing data loss and start causing problems. And as our data rates go up, we see that our frequencies go up, which means that our wavelength is shorter. So smaller problems cause bigger issues. And also we're not just going turning off and on. So we don't just have this sine wave going down there that's either off or on. We have multi-level signals we're centered across that cable. So all of these can be significantly impacted. And things that didn't impact us at slower speeds are going to start biting us at higher speeds.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

And that's that's an argument I get in with electricians all the time, right? Because they're like, ah, it's just wire. It's just cable. Yeah, no, no, it's not. It's it truly isn't. But you know, you know, when you that and that's why I'm always a big proponent. You get what you pay for. You know, technically speaking, I should be able to go to Home Depot and buy a Cat 6 jack and put it on a Cat 6 cable. You know, it's you know, let's say it's a you know, not one of the big three, but it's just somebody else. And theoretically it should pass cat six, and it probably will, but you're not gonna have the best performance out of it because when you look at the manufacturers, they they fine-tune the connectors and the cable so they get the best match between them. So maybe it's only 99.5 for the cable and 100.5 for the connector, because the smaller that difference, the more energy goes through that connection point. So that's why I always thought, you know, you know, yeah, you can do that, but if you're using brand A cable, try to use brand A jack, especially if it's one of the big ones, because they they spend a lot of time and energy to try to get those into you know match systems to get the best performance out of them.

Bad Hardware And Misleading Labels

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Well, you know, it's funny you mentioned Home Depot. Let me, I got to show you this one real quick, because I got my Home Depot special right here. And that is I was at Home Depot and they had a wall plate over there in the Datacom aisle, and it had screw terminals on the back. And and it said it was rated at uh, let's see, what did I run the Cap 5E? And I said, no, no way, no way. And so what I did is I bought all of them because I didn't want anyone to get one of them. So I took them all off the shelf and I brought them back here, and I took some CAP5E cable, I stripped the conductors because I had to put them on the screw terminals, but we see that you know, right there for return loss, we are failing return loss miserably. And so what we do with return loss is we come in and we take a look at our HD TDR analyzer. Now, this is saying we've got resistance is a problem. Um okay, I I I didn't look at resistance before on here. But this is what we find is that because we didn't do a PoE test, resistance is information only. But I I would expect resistance around 3.8. We're up to 40 ohms here. Wow. And with when we do a PoE test, we're looking at we have a limit of about 21 ohms. So right off, we've got resistance issues in here. Um we've got our return loss as we saw. So if I come back and look at fault info and I look at HDTDR, uh, we are seeing these big spikes of return loss here at each end. And so the impedance difference, like we've been talking about, is so great between this connector that really was more of a telco. I it it is something I would expect to see in the 1950s. You know, when you pull that uh dial toe that dial phone off the wall and you've got that plate behind it, this is not what I would expect to have Cat5E stamped.

SPEAKER_03 12:30

I think that was uh uh an optimistic view by somebody in marketing, right? Yes, because uh, I mean with the screw, the screw face down plates, um, when I first got in the industry in 1982, um they were still using them then. Well, for data, we were using twin axe and coax and a bunch of other stuff. We weren't really using twisted pair for for data cabling. So screw down faceplates were around for a long time. They didn't really start using the IDC style faceplates until we kind of migrated together with voice and data. Then you start seeing more of the one ten style type of faceplates and stuff like that. And you know, and and the key the key the key thing is too, don't believe everything that you see, don't believe everything that you read. That's why, you know, you know, I I get I hear this a lot, you know, but Chuck it said, you know, that CCA cable says CAD six, so it should be fine. It's CCA cabling. Number one, it's a potential code violation, just right out of the gate. It's a potential code violation. You know, it's kind of what some people would argue that it is a code violation, but it kind of really depends on the inspector and whether they catch or not. But those are those are two different

Zip Ties Change Geometry And Results

SPEAKER_03 13:37

things.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

So some of the things today I actually had a great day testing things out and saying, hey, let's let's take a look at um I you know what's going on. So I took some Cat 6, uh Cat 6 permanent link, and I ran a test on it. And so let me bring it up here. And what I see is it performed great. I've got positive numbers all the way across, everything's a green check mark. I passed. Now, for all of these tests that I did, I turned on the diagnostic test. Now, normally, if we see generating diagnostics appear on the tester, our heart skips a little bit. It's like, oh man, today was going so good. And usually when we see generating diagnostics, it means it's marginal or it failed. Right now, I saw it every time because I was running this. But when I look at this, and here's what I see on a Cat 6 cable. In fact, this was one of the cables that we carried around forever doing the workshops and stuff like that for Fluke. And so we've got a little bit of return loss at each end, but when we look at along the length of the cable, it looks good. Right now, when it comes to return loss, what we're looking for, and I'm gonna take my and I'm gonna pinch and zoom into my tester right here, because I we need to really zoom in. When it comes to return loss, we're looking for some pretty small values. Now, ideally, what we don't want to have happen is we don't want our return loss to exceed plus or minus 0.8% along the length of the cable. Now, here I'm at 1%, 1%. We've got a few that we're exceeding it on. Um, but for the most part, this looks pretty good. Now, what I did, because there's always that debate over zip ties. So I said, I'm gonna test this out. So I grabbed, I had two pieces, two 10-foot sections, an EMT, and I had a couple of uh uh metal bars for hanging shelves and stuff on. So I put a zip tie every two feet, and I grabbed my zip tie gun, and it doesn't go up to 11, unfortunately. I got it up to nine.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Didn't you? You cranked it down.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

I did. I in fact, I wanted to get it right at that edge before it breaks the zip tie, and I went through every one of those, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, and I I crimped those down and I re-ran the test and we got a marginal pass. Now, a marginal pass is a case, and here we're our return loss was marginal. And if I were to switch to the pair that had the biggest problem, which was four or five, and then I came in and I zoomed in, we almost made it. We were marginal at 248 megahertz. So we test that that cat six up to 250, we almost made it, but we didn't. Now, every tester has an accuracy band, right? And it'd be neat if we could print it on here. And and in fact, I had somebody comment on one of my TikTok, I think it was on TikTok or Instagram, they said, well, the fooke's not 100% accurate. And I said, No tester is exactly, but the the thing is we know what the margin of error is. Now, I don't know right off the top of my head what the margin of error is at 248 uh megahertz for cat cat six, but I can tell you we're within that margin.

Marginal Passes Standards And Contracts

SPEAKER_02 17:19

So, right here, we are within the margin of error of the tester. So anytime we're in the margin of error of the tester, it puts an asterisk up there and it comes in. Now, ANC TIA and ISO IEC say a pass is a pass. So they say there is no marginal pass and there is no marginal fail. There is only pass and there is only fail.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Let's take a short break. Are you trying to reach the technicians, project managers, and decision makers of the ITT industry? Then why aren't you advertising on Let's Talk Cabling? With over 150,000 impressions a month across podcasts, YouTube, and social media, this isn't just a show, it's the go-to resource for the low voltage industry. We spotlight the tools, training, and technology shaping the future of structured cabling. And your brand could be front and center. Don't just get noticed, get trusted. Email Chuck at advertising at letstalkcabling.com and let's connect your brand to the right audience today.

SPEAKER_03 18:30

But I just talked about this in my live stream tonight. There's the four-tier cake. The bottom one is codes. Got to follow the code.

SPEAKER_05 18:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 18:39

Next layer up is standards that guarantee performance. The next one above that is the best practice manuals, right? And the the fourth tier, and this one's the most important one here, manufacturers recommendations.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

And the contract.

SPEAKER_03 18:54

And the contract, exactly. So it even if the ANSI says, you know, it's either a pass or fail, there's no marginal. I can tell you several manufacturers either won't accept star pass test results or they'll only accept a limited number of them. And when they go to and they when they the ones who do say we'll accept the limited number of one of them, they're going to want additional information. They're going to, when you got that star pass, what did you do to fix it?

SPEAKER_02 19:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

And that kind of stuff. So yeah, even though the standard says you know, there's there is no such thing as a star pass, the manufacturers and and the contract documents also will often spin.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

And so one of the things I've done in almost every one of my classes is I do a poll. In your organization is a marginal pass, a pass, or fail. And I will tell you uh 100% of the time now, it comes out 75-25. 75% of them say, regardless of what the standard says, regardless of what the contract says, we will not submit marginal passes. And my favorite comment on that was somebody said, our company policy is green for green. So if we want to get paid, like it, we got to deliver green results. And I thought that that is really a good one. And I and it's nice when the company says we don't feel comfortable because now we have to explain why it looks like that.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

Right.

unknown 20:19

Right.

SPEAKER_03 20:19

I'm gonna have to add that question to my classes too. I mean, there's several questions I ask every class. Like, hey, do you guys prefer Velcro or TIRAP? Do you guys prefer spools over boxes? There's several those qu and those are just just more from my my research than nothing else. I'm gonna have to add that one to my to my to my to my list of questions. That's that's a that's a great, great question. And the and you're right, the companies like when you look at the low voltage industry, it there's no two companies are the same. There's the one company that it's you know a guy who just started out on his own, he's doing everything, pulling a cable, terminating cable, testing the cable, submitting the invoice, doing the bids. He's doing everything. And then there's the other cables, like I used to work for a company called Hinkles and McCoy, where they had offices all over the place. You had SMA staff, a project management staff, uh installation staff, and stuff. So it's usually the companies that have really developed a good reputation. I can name several off the top of my head, like IES, E2 Optics, technologies. Those people go the extra mile because they understand there's value in that that the customer will pay for. And those are usually the ones I would expect to say, hey, yeah, sorry, we're not accepting any star pass as results. Uh those are the ones I would expect.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

And and the thing is that because we can test this stuff ahead of time and we know that though those connectors all work together, there's no reason we should, you know, it we shouldn't have star passes.

Finding Hidden Faults With HDTDR

SPEAKER_03 21:45

Right.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

Um, we should be able to put it in there. Now, in this case, this came up with a cause of failure not identified. And this is a this is a tricky one because I click on that and it just beeps at me. It doesn't tell me anything. And it points at the link and it says, Hey, something's wrong, but we can't pinpoint it. So if we're depending on the fault info to tell us everything that's wrong, we're kind of on our own right here. But that's okay. We can figure it out. And in this case, when I look at my HT HDTDR analyzer, we again we have to zoom in. But what we're going to find is that if we were to compare this, let's get down to where we're at 1%. If we were to compare this to the other one, we're exceeding that 0.8% a lot more times. Right. And that's because everywhere that we have a cable tie, it's changing the geometry of that cable and it's causing a little bit of signal to come back to us.

SPEAKER_03 22:48

Well, that's why that's why manufacturers, for their high performance data cabling, their high frequency cabling, I won't say always, but far more often than not, they put splines in them, crossweb separators, to preserve that cable geometry. So that way, if you do happen to over-cinch, you're not, by the way, the what standard says for as far as tie wraps and velcro's, it says you can use cable bindings. It doesn't specifically call out tie wraps, it says cable bindings. It just says if you use cable bindings, they gotta be placed at irregular distances and not over-cinched, right? Because again, when you go bracket, you're changing the paired geometry inside the cable, and then that causes problems. But here's here's the rub. Here's my Shakespeare quote for you. Here's the rub, Mr. Mike.

SPEAKER_05 23:32

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 23:33

Because the manufacturers are battling to produce the smallest Cat 68 cable they can. Because if you want if you look at the last five years, six years, you know, they used to be like 0.3 something, 0.354, 0.33, 0.32. Now can't you find Cat 68 cables into 0.26, 0.255, 0.25, even 0.23, right? Well, the way they get down to the 0.23 is they get rid of the crossweb separators.

unknown 24:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:00

So they're kind of a small. And what they do is they change the that even makes it even tougher of a challenge when you start talking about pair geometry, because it's it's it's a lot easier just and just making a coil, right? With it with a with a spineless cat sixty cable to to mess up that pair geometry. And that's why I tell people all the time in classes, your number your number one thing while you're out there pulling cable, you should be doing it to keep the cable from getting kinked, crushed, stepped on, cut, burnt, or painted. Okay. You do you do those six things, you're probably gonna be I'd choose my words carefully, probably gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Well, and that's there was a uh rep up here that had we he was moving and he had a spool of uh the the Levitan uh reduced diameter cat 6A.

SPEAKER_03 24:47

Right.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

He said, You want this? It's like sure, I'll take it. So I've got that, and that's one of the ones I've been playing around with, and it'd be interesting to try it on here. But just like you said, that doesn't have the spline in there, right? So that they can reduce the the core diameter or that overall diameter on there. Now, one of the things that I did, because I always want to see is this permanent, I removed the zip ties and I retested the cable and we passed. And in fact, we got a good solid margin on that return loss. So it isn't an end-all thing. You know, it didn't we were able to uh take the zip ties off. I kind of ran my hand along the cable, boom, cable's back to where it was before we put the zip ties on there, so not a uh permanent damage to it, and then I went in and I thought, okay, can I make this cable fail uh just by twisting it? So I took one end of that cable and I started twisting it, and you could feel the difference in how the pairs were wrapped around each other, and now we see our return loss is failing. Uh normally we would say that if we fail below uh 50 megahertz, that this is an indication that we've got a problem with the cable. I come back here, I go to my fault info, I look at my HDTDR, and here down at the remote end is where I had gone to work on that cable. And you can see uh the cable feels different on you know, on the jacket, right? You can tell that it's not all twist, the pairs aren't twisted around each other, but this is where it's fallen apart. Right now, I was able to go, I went back and I twisted it the opposite direction, I could get it to pass. Twisted it back around, I could get it to fail. So this was a case where I was able to take the twist out of it. But when we see that something changes the way those pairs are in relation to each other within the pairs, we fail. But the interesting thing is we're not failing crosstalk. Crosstalk looks good because we didn't change the twist of the pairs, we changed the relationship of the pairs to each other.

SPEAKER_03 27:09

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, you're making me want to get back into testing stuff again. You know that it's all your fault.

SPEAKER_05 27:15

It's all your fault.

SPEAKER_03 27:16

And I you know, a couple years ago, I was walking through Home Depot, I guess it was, and I found this. This is a uh Klein category six days cable stapler. And I was giving me a piece of cable, I'm gonna staple it and I'm gonna test it. That was two years ago, right? So now you make me want to get out my tester and some cable and go do that now. And then because it's yeah, I find this stuff I guess I'm a geek. I'm a cable geek. I'm just super interesting. Super interesting.

Wiremap Faults Opens Shorts Rolled Pairs

SPEAKER_03 27:48

Let's uh let's move a conversation to uh Wirmap faults. That's probably the one I see the most, you know, little nation and and uh telecom tax and all those other Facebook groups. One of the most common things I'll see is just like you said, somebody will take their phone, will take a picture, right, uh of that thing. And I'll put, hey guys, what of this? And I've seen some really weird things. Some really weird things. Uh let me see. I think I uh I think I got those pictures that you sent me. Let me uh I'll go ahead and clear yours off of your screen, and then I'll pull up mine and uh uh let me see it's under media. So I'm gonna I'm gonna throw you a couple and you just kind of explain, hey, what's going on with this?

SPEAKER_02 28:27

So there's the first one. Seven eight is open, and the nice thing is it tells us where it's open. So the main is on the left, the remote is on the right. So in this case, that is open at uh well let me put on my glasses here. That one is open at uh 51 feet from the main and 54 feet from the remote. And you know, it's funny, it reminds me I was uh there was a trade show called Interop that I worked on for years and years, and somebody said that uh one of the links to a booth stopped working. They said, well, it's because they put those halogen lights up there and they're messing with the cabling. So I threw the cable tester on and it messed with the cable. We had an open, it's because they got the cable between the iron and the clamp, and they pinched on the cable so hard it cut the pairs. But we we were able to trace out exactly where it was, yeah, it's exactly where that light's clamped on up there. Yep. So in this case, I would look at the foot marker at the beginning, go out to that point, and see what's going on. Could be a gap, could be one location, but that's what it is.

SPEAKER_03 29:35

Yeah, it kind of depends on what the overall length of the run was. So yeah, that one's relatively easy. Let's look at this one.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Uh-huh. Roll roll pairs.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

Was not paying attention.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

And you know, sometimes we see this happen if somebody's crimping a connector on to do like an MPTL link or something. Oh, yeah, yeah. Where they're putting it in a crimp on connector, and it's easy to get them reversed in there. Yeah. Upside down, just two wires get twisted when they're putting it into the the crimp-on connector. I went ahead when I created this, it was uh I went overboard with doing all four pairs. Usually it's one pair, and they uh the tester can't tell me which end is is wired wrong. It knows that one is going to two and two is going to one. Now, because we're running a differential node signal, which really doesn't care about polarity, and with PoE, we run positive across one pair and negative across a different pair. I'll tell you, this cable would still work with Ethernet and PoE. I probably shouldn't say that because it yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:39

Yeah, let's not say that.

SPEAKER_02 30:41

In this case, I would inspect the end I'm at, right? And if it's punched down correctly, then the problem's at the other end.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

You know, it's funny you you mentioned that. Um you one of the one of the biggest arguments you hear on on the internet is 568A versus 568B. And I even did a show on that. I took a hundred-foot piece of cable, terminated A, tested it, cut the ends off, terminated B, tested again, and the test results were nearly identical. They were both well within the pass. And I say nearly identical because it was a tiny bit of difference, but I couldn't attribute that difference between the the pair sequencing or just maybe I terminated the second jack a little bit better, the first one, because I was getting into my groove, right? But either way, they were both in. But the the the melt the the the myth that I want to dispel here is because a lot of people fall into this because they say the the computer doesn't care what color the conductors are, and that's a true statement, it doesn't care about the color, right? No, but no they'll say, oh, but you could run them straight across and and it would work. No, no, no, because you're mixing up transmission channels now, right?

SPEAKER_05 31:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

And that that's you know it's either A on both sides or B on both sides, right? Don't don't don't put them straight across because you'll end up splitting the the second and the second channel, and then just you start getting all kinds of all kinds of weird stuff.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Early in my career, I went in, there was a actually a big router manufacturer at the time that's not in business anymore. I was in their lab and they were having all kinds of network problems. And I walked in and I told I told them, I can tell you what this the problem is right now. They had like a thousand-foot spool of silver satin cable, and they had a big bin of crimp on connectors, and they were using that to make their cables. And it's like, I I feel bad charging you to come out here and tell you that it's that cable.

SPEAKER_05 32:27

Right.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

And and that is the thing, is and that's what our wire map testers don't tell

Cheap Testers And Split Pair Risk

SPEAKER_02 32:33

us. Right. And you know, I do I do a lot of videos, I use the fluke equipment because that's what I've got and what I do training on, and I get a lot of it's really expensive. It is not it is not cheap equipment. And there's a variety, I can go everywhere from a Intelitone that does a wire map to a micro scanner to a link IQ to getting up into the DSX. And the problem is with the cheap wire map testers, they're gonna pass something like a split pair cable. And that is an issue.

SPEAKER_03 33:09

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Uh let's go ahead and look at the next one.

Connector Shorts Crimping And IDC Wins

SPEAKER_02 33:14

That is a short. So and in fact, that is shorted again. That is shorted fifth 53 feet from the main.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Right. Two old guys with glasses talking about. And so for those of me not know, because I I don't automatically assume that everybody who watches my show, they understand what an open is, what a short is. Um what a short is, it means two conductors, and this one's showing within the same pair, the blue pair. Um either they left the ends too long and they're touching each other, or the cable got sandwiched between a metal stud and a gypsum board and they ran a screw through it, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 33:59

Um, those two conductors are somehow touching each other or marked or or making continuity with each other, and that's why it's giving that short.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

Um and that's uh, you know, one I've seen is with field terminated connectors, especially if they're shielded. Uh, because a lot of times in those we lay the pairs down and then we have to use a pair of flush cuts to trim those off to get it in there. If they're touching that housing on there, uh that can cause it. Uh, another one that is very controversial is uh pass-through crimp-on connectors.

SPEAKER_03 34:33

Okay, let's settle this debate right here, right now, okay? Um the problem with mod connectors, pass-through or traditional, is not it's pass-through or it's traditional. The problem with, number one, are you using the right crimper design with the mod and connector that you're using? Number two, are you maintaining your crimper? Are you putting replacing the blades when they need to be replaced? Are you doing it correctly? Those are the big three. Those are the big three. Because yeah, we also you've probably seen them because I see y'all over the internet too. People post these pictures of the mod and connector with fried out. Look, another pass-through problem. That doesn't tell me it's a pass-through problem.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

It just doesn't. Nope, but I've got I've got a pass-through that's on the end of a cat piece of cat 6A. That it the the short is at zero at the end, and so it is shorted out that and it's because the blade didn't trim it off correctly. And I'll tell you, I have been uh become a huge fan of field terminated connectors. Yeah, and there's there are both shielded and unshielded versions out there, and I know that when it comes to cameras and stuff, a lot of times they just don't fit into the housings, they're not convenient. But the fact is, by using an insulation displacement connection, I am getting a good, positive, solid mechanical connection. And and when you look at how that how those pins come down, in fact, one of the things that we can look at in in some of the test results is where we have a resistance unbalanced within a pair. And when we run into that, that is nine times out of ten, a bad punch down or a bad crimp on one end or the other.