How To: Make your own Cat5e cable

[Ioman]

Quote:
"Anyone who has set up a network before knows how expensive networking cables can get. One twenty-five foot cable costs $20 at BestBuy. Instead of buying all the cable, why not make your own? Today we'll be teaching you just that: How to make your own CAT5e Cable - Up to 12 cables, totaling up to 100 feet, all for only $20."

http://www.ochardware.com/articles/cat5e/cat5e.html

[IronSerif]

My brother in law have done this before, not with just Cat5 cable, but coaxil and regular telephone cable as well.

But it's all thanks to him, cause he works for a data cabeling company. So he knew what he was doing for the most part, but I was definately there watching and giving a helping hand :D

[ruri]

We used to roll our own at work all the time.

We used Belden cable and had no problems with them.

Once you have the right crimping tools, everything else is easy.

Then we discovered a local electronic store that sells surplus goods, and found cables for dirt cheap pricing. Picked up a 100ft 3-prong 12-gauge extension cable for like $5. A 10ft cat-5 cable for like $1. At that price, we said screw it, and stopped making our own.

We still have about 200ft of cat-5 cable on the spool...

So find yourself some electronic surplus store. There're great deals to be had.