Spent 4 hours troubleshooting a bad network drop yesterday

A client in Oak Park called me in because their office drop would connect at 100Mbps max instead of gigabit. I swapped cables, tested the switch port, checked the patch panel all for nothing. Turns out the original installer crimped the keystone jack wrong on one pair inside the wall plate. Took me 90 minutes to finally pull the plate and see the orange pair was punched down on the blue slot.

2 comments

2 Comments

ruby_rivera768d ago

This happened to a buddy of mine who works on the north side. He spent almost two hours chasing a slow connection in a small law office, swapped everything he could think of. Finally found a staple had pinched through the cable jacket and shorted one pair right behind the baseboard.

margaretm237d ago

Remembered a story from a neighbor who had a similar thing happen with his home network. He'd been having spotty internet for weeks, TV would freeze up during storms, but only sometimes. Called the provider and they kept telling him it was his router. Finally he crawled under his house to check the wiring and found a nail from when they had the floors replaced had gone right through the coax cable. It was barely touching the center conductor, just enough to mess things up when it got humid. Drove him absolutely crazy because it never failed completely, just acted up whenever there was moisture in the air. Sounds like your buddy's staple was the same kind of sneaky problem, the ones that make you second guess everything you know about cabling.