Is this possible?
I'm trying to wire two Ethernet jack ports into a trailer outback so two computers can plug into the wall at the same time.
I have one long CAT6 cable with an rj45 connector on one end that is plugged into the router in the main house, and loose wires on the other end. I have two CAT6 punchdown keystone ports and I've wired one of the ports in with the two pairs: orange, w/orange & green, w/green. It works fine, the internet is connected and working on my computer. The second jack has not worked for me yet that needs to connect to the remaining blue, w/blue & brown, w/brown wires not worked for me yet. I've tried a few wiring schemes but I obviously am missing something.
Do I need to wire two jacks into the other side of this one cable and plug it into two ports in the router? Do I need a second cable when using CAT6 as opposed to CAT5 wiring? Is this even a possibility and is there a wiring scheme I just haven't tried yet for the blue/brown pairs?
Thanks in advance for the help, I'm trying my best two learn these things.
-Ruby
Best Answer
OK.
Short answer: yes.
Longer answer:
CAT6 (and cat 5 and ..) cables have 8 wires. 4 of those for 10/100Mbit Ethernet. All eight are used for gigabit speeds.
This means that you can split one 8 wire cable into two sets on both ends and run two 100mbit connections over it. You can do this either by creative wiring both ends, or you can use existing plugs similar to these:
This will effectively wire your network like this:
This is likely not officially supported, but it works well enough.
Note that you cannot run gigabit speeds over these cables anymore. You no longer have the 8 wires per connection needed for that.
If you have any electrical power in the trailer (and I presume you do, if for nothing than to run the computers off), then the proper answer becomes a 'do not do this, but a switch instead'. 4 port switches are dirt cheap, do not limit your speed down to 100Mbit and will save you a lot of time.
If you do no have power and are running one or more laptops on battery, then consider these cheap pre-made plugs over building your own cable. Keeping things standard is a good thing.