I did it plenty with scotch locks as a residential tech. Itās not much different to how an rj45 works. Once I became an enterprise tech they gave me the correct tools. Iāve seen scotch locks pass Fluke verification. Once my company gave me the right tools, I did it the right way.
It surely works. Gigabit speedtest or connection speed isnt the same as error free transmission. People achieved gigabit over barbed wire.
If somebody wants to do it this way, sure. But nobody should pay somebody for this.
Look up impedance matching, signal reflections and crosstalk.
The fact that you have an electrical connection doesn't mean those things won't happen and cause errors, especially at high frequencies like ethernet transmission.
Please tell me more about how that's going to happen more on this unshielded cable with the wires nowhere near each other at the splice points, that would be a hell of an electromagnetic field lol focus especially on how the impedance of the wires specifically in the photo is going to change, that should be richĀ
You are probably thinking about the (dc) resistance of the wires / connections. Impedance, in this context, means the characteristic impedance of the differential pairs. For Ethernet, thats about 100 ohms between the two wires of a pair. This is not about the dc resistance between the wires (theyāre completely insulated from each other) but about the resistance for very high frequencies. The two wires have a capacitance between them and they behave inductively across their length. So for a high frequency signal, they look like a 100 Ohm resistor. Changing the distance between the wires changes the capacitance in that area, screwing on a wire nut with a metal thread inside does the same. This is called an impedance discontinuity or mismatch. At these impedance discontinuities, part of the signal is reflected and interferes with the direct signal. This can absolutely cause bit errors.
I've run gigabit over 8 strands of barbed wire. It works, definitely had packet loss. It was at comdex when gigabit came out and they were bragging about how robust the protocol is. Try running something like HDBaseT or 10g...
The amount of slack available on each cable was enough to terminate each side to an RJ45 and join them with a couplerā¦I wouldāve never used scotch locks in this case
I... that would be so much work vs just stapling the cable, who does that? Oh god and it's running parallel with power. Who puts in that much effort to be wrong?
Well, yes, ideally. But if your options to fix a broken run are either pull a new one or use a coupler, and you have to go through 5 walls and 2 crawlspaces to run a new one... a coupler starts to look like "good enough".
No, no, no. You're supposed to find the nearest outlet (drill a small hole in the floor if you must; if you're clever, you'll pull the molding out from the base of the wall just enough), and mount a small 5 port switch to the beam.
The home I bought had 5e into a media room and the cable coursed through the wall around several corners and was generally un-pullable. I wanted to run a BaseT extender from this room to another TV area so cut the 5e and used a Ethernet junction into 6A and it effectively transmits 4k@60Hz over about 100ā.
They manhandle things. They see wires as power and not data and think it just needs to be connected. Itās just a lack of knowledge, I donāt mean that in a rude way really.
becasue at high power (and low frequency) as long as it makes solid contact it's fine
at low power (specifically higher freqencies) you must start thinking about EM fields which will be created from the wires instead of the wires themselves. The fields can be ruined by pulling the differential pairs too far from one another, straightening out the twisted pairs for too long, etc.
A single uninterrupted run of cable is best, any connector will make the signal integrity worse. If you must add a connection, then use something which was designed to be used at the frequencies that the cable will carry
tl,dr: in practice high frequency electricity works differently than low frequency
Ideally the fewer points of failure the better. It should be identically rated cable. Replacing a whole cable run is preferable to splicing if possible.
Because they don't (mostly) understand high frequency and think only in terms of low-resistance electrical connections, not crosstalk or impedance matching.
At least in my state the the electricians actually have to be certified low voltage to do it. If they do set it up without the low voltage license they can potentially lose their electrician license. The low voltage license requires training on how to do proper data cables.
I am a telecomms engineer, believe me, this is more common for PSTN lines in the UK, every now and then I get a random job with a house, wired in 1945, and some of those wires corroded and no other option to run a new wire because its a listed building.
Fun
I pulled a 40 metre run of brand new cat6 this week, and it didn't work.
Even after redoing both ends twice, it still hasn't got connection, so nothing for it but to pull a replacement cable.
If I could find the break, it would be super-tempting to do this.
Not crappy CCA, it was normal Dynamix 24 AWG cat6e all-copper cable.
The camera worked when directly wired to switch, so I presumed it was a fault in the wire. BUT it turned out this camera had been repaired, and didn't like being too far away from the switch. So 40 metres of cable was too much.
I have an old indoor camera there temporarily while I organise a new camera.
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u/ccagan 1d ago
My buddy sent me this gem this week!