Andrew Gabriel wrote:
"Graham." writes:

What would your opinion be about advising someone who
is DIYing their own installation, and also making a number of
patch leads to buy stranded UTP, and use it for both permanent wiring
and patches, as stranded does krone OK?

Patch leads are so cheap (if bought from the right places)
that I struggle to think anyone would normally make them.
(Having said that, I do occasionally make them, but only
for very strange reasons, not for bog-standard patches.)


FWIW I trail a lot of network cables around here. Not much into making
things permanent with wall / rack mounted sockets, so every cable is
male-male threaded through holes peppered through walls.

For the loose supply of RJ45 connectors there seems to be different
types for stranded and unstranded (solid) cable.

I mostly use the unstranded type with solid cable which up to now[1] is
just a single wires sort, shove and crimp thing that takes me a couple
of minutes each.

[1] However at Maplin, they have "Solid Core Cable RJ45 Connectors"
http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=48922 - Order code N20CH
which consist of extra fiddly little plastic bits that when fiddled
further with (and not lost down the back of the sofa [2]) nicely align
the conductors for the final shove into the gold jaws of the IDC contacts.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Media/PDFs/C...5_Assembly.pdf

Fun to do, but takes longer to do once ye have the T-568B colour order
ingrained in ya mind...

[2] Or whatever gap exists to lose life's wotsits and guarantee return
trips back to the shop for more ...

--
Adrian C