Properly Crimping an RJ-45 Jack
First and foremost is a good crimp tool. There are several RJ-45 crimpers on the market, but the best is a ratchet-style tool. The tool is designed to
squeeze eight brass conductors through the individual wire insulation so they make contact with the internal brass strands. Each of the eight conductors
must make good contact with each of the eight wires inside the RJ-45.
The following are step-by-step instructions for each RJ-45 crimp:
1 Slice and peel back about 2 to 3 inches of the Cat-5 jacket, exposing the inner wires.
2 Untwist each of the pairs. Arrange them in the proper order. The correct 568A color order from left to right is:
1. Orange Stripe
2. Orange
3. Green Stripe
4. Blue
5. Blue Stripe
6. Green
7. Brown Stripe
8. Brown
3 Once you have the wires in the proper color order, hold them between your thumb and forefinger.
4 Trim the wires to approximately ½ inch in length so they are even across the end. Note that a good crimp tool has a built-in trimmer for this
purpose.
5 While you are still holding the wires in their proper order, slide them into the open end of the RJ-45 connector with the tab pointing down. Be
sure to push the wires all the way to end of the connector. The RJ-45 has a crimp point at the open end that should extend over the edge of
the Cat-5 jacket.
6 Place the RJ-45 into the crimp tool and squeeze the tool as far as possible. If you are using a ratchet style tool, you should squeeze it until it
no longer clicks.
When the crimp is complete, the RJ-45 should be securely crimped to the jacket of the Cat-5. This insures a reliable connection. It is very important
that each end of each run of Cat-5 is terminated the same way. Each of the Cat-5 cables is then inserted into one of the RJ-45 ports on the back of the
Allport™ (fig. 3 - See pg. 8). Note that the order of the connections for each listening zone is not important to the operation of the system, but you
should label each Cat-5 for its zone should you have to refer to them later.
Please note: The only way to know that the termination is accurate is to use a Cat-5 tester for each termination.
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