My house is less than 10 years old. The standard builders package included a cat5 run to every room, but I paid extra for them to do cat6 instead.
After upgrading my internet service a year or so ago, I had been experiencing random disconnects and link speed slowdowns to my desktop PC in my basement office area.
Today I traced all the wires in the house. The electrician installed cat6 everywhere, except two runs were cat5. Guess where one of them was?
@voltronic
Staples on the Cat5 and Cat6? Ouch! I've seen Romex shorted because of sloppy stapling.
@Sr0bi
They used the same large hammer-in staples you use on Romex. In the unfinished mechanical room of my basement, none of those are holding the cable tight to the joists but who knows what they did inside the walls?
@Sr0bi
I told all this to my friend across the street who is a former systems engineer for a major ISP, and he was horrified.
If the jacket isn't pinched it may be fine. Actually the staple on Romex did not quite short the wire. It weakened the insulation and waited for a surge to punch through creating a very narrow spark gap. After that it would trip the breaker but still read good with a general purpose ohm-meter.
@Sr0bi
I have a Klein cable tester with remote on the way, and my buddy is going to help me get Wireguard set up to do throughput testing to different outlets.
@voltronic
Lesson of the day: Don’t trust an electrician to install telecommunications cables.
@voltronic
Seriously tho, that sucks. Hopefully you can use the cat5 to fish cat6 through the walls.
What's especially maddening is that I can see from the unfinished portion of the basement that this cat5 was pulled with a cat6 alongside it, which goes to the outlet directly above it on the main floor. An outlet I never use, as that room is dedicated to piano things.
Oh, and the best part is that all of these cables are stapled to the joists / studs as though they were Romex. So rather than pull through a replacement myself, I might have to hire a pro to do it. 🤬