So, a few weekends ago, I got a 1000 ft spool of Cat6A cable, some Cat6A keystone jacks, some 25 ft metal fish tape, and some other miscellaneous items for an in-wall Gigabit Ethernet home cabling project. Cool! Alas, being a first timer at this kind of thing, there were some errors made the first time through and some lessons to be learned. So, here is my summary of what those lessons are.
- Use T568B wiring scheme, period. Don’t bother even considering T568A. If you look around at the color coding in all the Ethernet patch cables you have, you’ll notice they’re all T568B. Besides, Internet HOWTOs on building your own patch cable don’t bother even mentioning T568A wiring, they only specify a single wiring scheme, and that one matches the color codes for T568B. Also, chances are that if you look carefully at the hints in the cabling, jacks, and equipment you’ve bought, it’s all optimized to make T568B wiring physically the easiest to wire up. Not to mention that the Ethernet cable companies simply sell much more T568B equipment than they do T568A.