I have an odd networking issue in my house

[G+_Craig De Groot]

I have an odd networking issue in my house. The walls are all wired to a patch panel and normally I connect the router to that and everything works. Recently I tried to move the router to another room for better signal and run the room connection where the router was back to a switch in the patch panel room.

 

That is where things stopped working. For some reason all my wall jacks seem to be wired wrong for this. I borrowed a tester and here is what I got:

12345678

21654387

 

And it is consistent all through the house.

 

So what do I do?

[G+_Eric K]

Looks like one end is wired 568B and the other 568A. Or one end of your cable is wired correctly and then you swapped the individual pair connections on the other end, i.e. wo, o, wg, b, wb, g, brw, br and then o, wo, g, wb, b, wg, br, brw. Actually, this definitely looks like the problem.

[G+_Eric Boyle]

It sounds like one of your patch cables is a crossover cable, which usually goes from the cable modem, d&l modem, whichever, to your router. A crossover has TX and rx pairs of wires crossed so it TX one end to rx on other end instead of straight through. So the wires on a tester normally read with numbers reversed. Usually though it's only on the 2nd and 3rd pair.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Not quite 568B x 568A. For that only pairs 2 (wires 3,6) and 3 (wires 1,2) would be crossed. If they're ALL messed up like that, check the patch cables you're testing with.

 

Otherwise, you've literally just switched the white/color wires around. Hard to say exactly how that happened if you're using patch panels and jacks everywhere - they all have color guides on them. If you're using home-made patch cables, that's extremely easy to do.

[G+_Craig De Groot]

Tested both the patch cables an they test as good straight pass through

cables.

[G+_Eric Boyle]

One end or the other of your wiring probably is off then. Maybe both. Check the color codes. Some people say doesn't matter as long as both sides match up. But in this case it doesn't look like both sides match

[G+_Black Merc]

I could be wrong but, don't that look like a Telco configuration?

[G+_Eric Boyle]

Some testers will tell you which end is bad, or backwards. For example if you plug in one end of the wire it may show 12345678 on top, and the backwards numbers on bottom. If you go to the other end and it shows 12345678 on bottom there, it's probably the end closest to you. But if it's just a led light up the numbers it probably won't indicate this

[G+_Craig De Groot]

I also tried testing both ways. I get the same results at both ends. What

is odd is that it is every port in the house. They must have done it this

way on purpose.

[G+_cr pol]

Craig De Groot

2 thoughts come to mind as to why do so on purpose. 1:perhaps at the time it provided additional shielding 2:the cables were available at a bargain price.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Have you tried moving the router back just to see if your cables work on the router and not the switch? I don't know why they would if they're all wired wrong, but maybe worth the try. Probably double check your punches on the patch panel and on a couple jacks to see where the wires got crossed.

[G+_Black Merc]

Only one thing to do... Rewire one end of each cable.

[G+_Craig De Groot]

I opened the patch panel and found every pair is reversed. The pic shows the bottom right which is fixed and the bottom left which is still reversed.

 

Thanks for your help!

[G+_Jason Marsh]

You'll see just about every wrong way to wire things just going into buildings for repairs/upgrades. A small used car lot I do occasional work for had, since construction, problems with their phones. The telco's contract repair guys were out several times. It was all home-run wired, but there was always cross-talk between the fax and voice line. A call on either would disrupt the other. Faxes would often fail even without a voice call interruption. Voice quality was poor.

 

I'd just built two desktops for them and was surprised when asked for wireless networking. They didn't have a wired network and I was merely poking around to see what was extant, considering rewiring and re-purposing the existing cat5 for ethernet use, as there was a phone jack on just about every wall.

 

It should have been such a simple installation. There were two lines, but two runs of cat5 to each box. Mo' runs = Mo' Money.

 

There was one, and only one, duplex jack. In a closet, no less. The striped wires were crossed between lines 1 & 2. Simple fix, but hadn't been discovered in the four years since construction. As it happened, the telco guy showed up while I was there. I sent him packing and I've been their goto guy for all technology problems since.

 

Much to my chagrin, the owner opted not to go ahead with wired networking. Until recently. Since I was going to have to go into the attic anyways, I ran new four-pair for the few drops he needed.

 

The first thing I notice from the top of my ladder is a tee off of the clean side of the return air duct (after the filter) running ten feet or so and just ending above the office area. Not capped. Just sucking dirty, hot air from the shop area. And mouse poo, likely. They'd had air conditioning problems since construction, as you might expect. The coil in the air handler had recently been replaced. I asked if I could be there when the HVAC guy comes out to correct the deficiency...