From the course: CompTIA Network+ (N10-009) Cert Prep

Terminating structured cabling

From the course: CompTIA Network+ (N10-009) Cert Prep

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Terminating structured cabling

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- What's kind of interesting in the networking world is that the only time we use little RJ45 crimps is for patch cables. Pretty much all the rest of the time we use a totally different type of connector called a 110-punchdown. Now what I have here is a patch panel, and I've also got a little jack that goes to a wall outlet. And if we take a look at these, we're going to see that we don't use crimps, we use 110-punchdowns. Let me show you what I mean. So welcome to your first 110-punchdown. This is the back of my patch panel, and this is a 24 port patch panel. There's 24 connectors on the front, so there's 24 and in each one is numbered, one 110-punchdowns that correspond to each one of the RJ45s in the front of this guy. Now there's a couple of things I want to bring to your attention. First of all, notice that there is a CAT rating to the patch panel. Everything in the networking world has a CAT rating, so it's not just cables, patch panels, crimps, connectors, everything has a CAT rating to it, and you want to make sure that that CAT rating matches up all the way across the board. Now the other thing to appreciate here is that what we're going to do is, we're going to use this little tool right here called a 110-punch down tool to actually punch down the individual connections. Now, before we do that, we're going to have to lay the wires out properly. So what I want you to do is come look over here just a little bit, and you'll see that there are 568A, and 568 B color codes for punching these guys down. Now if you look at this very carefully, you'll see that this does not correspond to earlier episodes where you had the blues in the middle, and you split the oranges or split the greens. And that's okay. That's because inside this patch panel it does the splitting for us, so we don't have to worry about that. So let's come on back over here. And what we're going to do is, we're going to go ahead and do a punchdown. Now I'm 568B, so I'm going to be using the lower one. And what I've done is I've actually already kind of pre-wired one end of my horizontal run to lay out properly for this. So I'm going to go ahead and use this one right here. The one's a little bit closer to you, and we kind of orient this guy a little bit. So we go ahead and get it into the first connection, and you just kind of push it down by hand. And then I put the last one in. So that kind of gets it lined up for me. Now take a look at this one 10 punchdown tool. You'll see that it's got a sharp edge, that's the edge that's going to cut the wire off. So you want to make sure this is oriented properly. So I want to orient it like this, and I give it a punch, and I've now got one of my punches in properly. I'm going to go ahead and do the last one now. (device punches) and let's go ahead and get the rest in. It's always a good idea to take one more quick peek, and make sure everybody is in the right position. Let's punch 'em down. (device punching) Now this is a nice little 110-punchdown for the back of my patch panel. This cable in turn is going to be using cable management, and it's going to be run one way or the other off to the side, and then it'll all be nicely bundled up in whatever it has to do to be nice and pretty. But I've got that guy all punched down. Now keep in mind, there's two ends to a horizontal run. Once we've got the patch panel punched down, well now it's time to do the outlet. So I've got a little tiny RJ45 outlet here. Let's go through the same process. So this is a little RJ45 connector. These are little covers, and we'll use those once we've got everything punched down. So here's the RJ45 end, and that's what's be sticking out of the face plate. And we go ahead and we punch down into these little tiny 110s. Now again, we still have to deal with CAT rating. You can see this one's a CAT 6. Let me turn that for you. There you go, CAT 6. And then there's also 568 A and B. On this particular one, the top set of colors are for A, and the bottom set are for B. So since I want to punch this as B, I'm going to have to start with my orange and my greens on this side. Now, luckily I've already got 'em pretty much lined up. Get that Kevlar out of the way. All right, so the idea here is that we're going to punch everything down, and it's going to line up about like this. Notice how it's oriented. That's kind of important. One of the big issues about higher CAT ratings is the distance from the punch to the last twist. For the most part, it's half an inch. Now I'm actually cheating here a little bit because, well this is for demonstration purposes only. And I don't think I'll quite make that half inch rule. But let's just go ahead, and get a couple of these guys placed in. Just going to worry about one side at a time. So I'm just going to... Get out of the way Kevlar. So I'm going to get the first one in, and the last one in on just this side. So that's orange and green, white. And again, I'm looking down at the bottom here and double-checking because I hate putting these things in, and getting it wrong. And now I'm going to use my punch down tool, (device punches) and I'll get these two in. These guys will go flying if you don't keep a good grip on 'em. So I'm holding on for dear life here. (device punches) I hate it when that happens. (device punches) (device punches) Okay, so half of them are in, and again, corresponding to the lower one, which is 568B. I know I'm in good shape. So let's go ahead and do the other side. (device punching) Now that is a beautifully crimped RJ45 jack. So let's put the covers on. And this guy is ready to be snapped right into a wall plate. Now this is a completely punched down horizontal run. On this end I'm going to have this coming out of the wall someplace near the user's computers. And this guy's going to be sitting on an equipment rack over in the equipment room, and they're pretty much ready to go. Now keep in mind I cheated here a little bit. For example, if there was a professional cable puncher downer person right now watching this, they would probably be having heart palpitations, particularly because I unwind a lot of wire a little bit more than a professional would do. And also I'm a little bit slow on a few things. One of the really cool things to watch is a professional cable installer do their thing. They're about eight times faster than me.

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