Resistors in Ethernet Cable

[cmpwat]

Morning everyone.

 

In 20 years working in IT i have never come across this and I have worked with Cat5e all that time, but today, I went to change a faceplate and found 2 resistors on the green pair of the Cat5e.

 

Does anyone know what they are for or why they may have been installed? We have had issues with this connection dropping out on a regular basis and am wondering if these may have been the problem?

 

 

Thanks

 

Wayne

[Boredguy]

Are they resistors, or has someone just used jelly clips to extend the green pair because they were too short?

[cmpwat]

You are correct Boredguy! Never seen these before in my life, and close inspection shows that the white/green cable is not very well connected! Fingers crossed, the new faceplate i have installed will resolve the issues!

[synaesthesia]

Those are just jelly clips to join cables.

 

** Edit - Beaten to it

[Boredguy]

Those are just jelly clips to join cables.

 

** Edit - Beaten to it

 

Come on @synaesthesia keep up

 

It's rare that they would be used in a network envrionment, but quite common for phones and alarm cables to be spliced with the jelly clips if there has been a break somewhere, or to use some of the unused pairs for another line.

[FN-GM]

If you can I would cut it all back and re-terminate it cleanly and get rid of them.

[Koldov]

Looks like they are some sort of termination device.

 

I dug up my front garden and laid some new turf last year. This involved me digging up my Virgin Media cable (phone, TV and internet).

 

Bit naughty I know but had to disconnect it from the box on the wall to thread it through a plastic pipe to put back underground (why that wasn't done by them I don't know).

 

Anyway, there were two of these connectors that I had to cut off, but I just wound the wires back together and electrical taped them

 

Been fine (touches wood)...

Edited January 6, 2017 by Koldov

[Dos_Box]

You're being bugged!

[synaesthesia]

Those are my preferred method of reconnecting broken cables if all other avenues are unavailable and Maplins want to charge something like £30 for what is essentially a cat 5 coupler. They're used very often in telecomms and more than sufficient for standard cat5. Wouldn't recommend them for anything more than that though, certainly if gigabit speeds & POE are involved.

[Fazza]

They're not resistors - they're cable joiners! Looks like they cut the cables a bit too short and instead of starting again they got a scrap bit of wire and joined them together! The only time I've seen these was when we had a an issue with a wireless link we've got and instead of doing what I asked and run a whole new cable, our cablers run half a new cable and used this things to splice it to an old one! Needless to say it caused issues with the link and had to be replaced and when I queried it with them (and told them off) they said that BT use them so didnt see the problem!

[synaesthesia]

They aren't an issue if done properly with my aforementioned warnings heeded. Saying "BT Use them" is hardly something to gloat about regardless Although with that amount of slack I fail to see why they didn't just cut back another inch and do it properly!

[Fazza]

Saying "BT Use them" is hardly something to gloat about regardless

 

I said that too them and they genuinely thought that if BT used them then they must be great! They were then updated to what BT are really like!!!

[dry]

Guessing whoever cut them originally didn't have a punch down tool handy to re-terminate?

 

(Pro tip: Credit cards work well as punch down tools if you're stuck!)