Networks Network cable damaged, solutions?

I have two network cables running into my bedroom from the study, about 20m, running under the floorboards. One is connected to the switch, and the other, I'm trying to connect to the server. I've known for a while that this cables doesn't work, found out a section where the cable has been under pressure.

I cut that bit out, and put in a RJ45 jack at each end, and connected them with a 30cm cable. The server connects to the hub, showing 100mbps, but I can only get 50 - 75% responses on pings and connection is really poor.

I've tried connecting to my bedroom from one end of the RJ45, no probs whatsover, tried connecting down, no probs whatsover. So I tried a new cable in between the two jacks, and same problem, poor connection.

So what alternative do I have, is there a way of connecting two cat5e cables without losing quality? I am NOT going to relay the cable as that means removing my fitted in desk, laminate floorboods, then the floorbords, the hallway carpet etc it'll be a nightmare. And I'm NOT going for wireless, cos I don't have room in the server. And I'm not going to connect the server to my bedroom switch, as I turn them off at night and want the server to be constantly connected to the switch in the study room.

Suggestions?

 

Generally for any data transfer system, the more obstacles in the signal path, the more signal attenuation you'll get. The cables and connectors are never going to be perfectly impedance matched so you either have to accept the reduced effectiveness of the connection or replace the damaged cable. Carefully soldering all the wires rather than using RJ45 connectors might improver performance somewhat, but on the other hand it might turn out that those connections are worse!

Couldn't you replace the cable by tying a new piece onto the old piece, and pulling it through, without having to rip up the floorboards?

 

could always get a cheap switch and bung that under your floorboards and use that to join the two cables instead.

 

No, because the cables are going through a hole in my laminate floorboard which is of perfect size for my two current cables, not two!

I was thinking that, I have an old 10mbps switch, but I want 100, but I might go for that option for now.

However, I was hoping that there would be some sort of device that would allow me to connect two cables ends (not a switch or anything).

 

I'm sure I've seen little cable connectors which do the job you want.

Wouldn't a switch make more sense though, as it would act as a signal repeater? Or am I just making things up here? (I do that sometimes).

 

Yeah, you can get a small box that has 2 female RJ45 sockets in, for connecting two cables together, but this will still cause signal degradation. Try heatshrinking and hot-gluing the two cables end to end and pulling the new cable through the hole that way?

 

Quite a good idea actually, it might work, just need to buy some new cables, just using my 10mbps hub at the mo, but its not very convienience with the power cables running out of the ceiling - got a little loft thing in the ceiling in the study where there was a leak once, very useful for running cables through the floor!

 

Try to force the connection to run at 10 mbps.

 

If you get a good quality coupler you should be okay, we use them a lot here at work, for joining two shorter CAT5 cables to make a nice long one.