Chat with an old timer about modem speeds changed my approach

I was at a supply house in Akron last week and this retired installer told me he used to run 56k lines through the same cable I'm fighting with today for gigabit. He said 'the wire don't care how fast the signal is, only the ends do' and it hit me that I been overthinking terminations. Any of you guys had a random conversation that made you look at your work different?

2 comments

2 Comments

grantthomas16d agoMost Upvoted

That old timer hit the nail right on the head. I remember back in 2019 I was running Cat6 through an old warehouse in Cleveland and spent three whole days re-terminating the same jacks because I thought the cable was bad. Turns out it was just a loose keystone on one end and the other end was fine. His point about the wire not caring is something I think about every time I start second-guessing a run now. It's funny how someone who's been doing this since the 80s can boil it down to something so simple. I've started trusting the cable more and spending my time making sure the ends are perfect, and my trouble calls have dropped way off.

rivera.henry16d ago

Go the other way on that. The wire doesn't care but the environment sure does, and cheap cable can absolutely be the problem no matter how clean your ends are. Had a batch of CCA cat6 last year that would pass a continuity test but drop packets if you looked at it wrong. Swapped it for solid copper and the problem vanished.