How to Make Network Cables?

How to Make Your Own Network Cables?

1. Making your own network cable
A network cable basically consists of a patch cable and two network connectors (formally known as RJ45 modular plugs) attached to each of its ends. The job of making your own cable is attaching these connectors to a patch cable.
What you need:
A crimping/cutting/stripping tool: This the most important tool; it helps cut, strip, and crimp patch cable. It costs just about $15. I personally use the Trendnet TC-CT68.
Patch cable: You can buy this in bulk; it costs anywhere between $40 to $100 for 1,000 feet. Shorter length costs less, accordingly. You can also turn an existing network cable into a patch cable by cutting off one or both of its network connector heads. This is typical when you want to make a cable shorter or want to replace a broken network connector.
RJ45 modular plugs: These network connector heads are very cheap; you can get 100 pieces for just a few dollars online.

The steps:
a. Use the tool to strip the patch cable's jacket about 1.5 inch from one end; you'll find eight color-coded wires (twisted into four pairs) that you'll need to arrange in a particular scheme.
This scheme, from left to right, is:
white/orange
solid orange
white/green
 solid blue 
white/blue 
solid green 

white/brown

solid brown.
Remembering this order is the hardest part of making the cable.
 There's no difference in terms of performance between these two wiring standards, and you can also use both of these wiring standards on one cable (one for each end) to make it a crossover cable used to connect two Ethernet-ready devices directly to each other.
b. With these wires pulled out straight and close together in the order above, make sure they are all the same length (you can trim them a bit if need be). Now insert them into a modular plug with the plug's bottom facing you. This step is actually very easy. Despite the small sizes of the parts involved, the plug has pin grooves on the inside to accommodate the wires, and the tiny size means that the wires can't easily go to wrong pins as long as they are properly aligned coming in. Check to make sure the wires go into the plug in the right order.
c. Insert the plug (with the wires now inside) into the crimp slot of the tool and crimp it.
Repeat the same step with another plug on the other end of the patch cable, and you have made yourself a network CAT5e cable. A quick calculation shows that a homemade network cable costs just a few cents per foot.
2. Wiring a wall network port
Now that you know how to make your own network cable, let's talk about how to hide it. As you might imagine, it's not a good idea to run a long cable from the router (in the living room) all the way to the home office, with say, the kitchen in between. Instead, it's better to make two wall network ports, one at the router and the other in the office. The cable connecting these two network ports can be hidden under the floor, on the roof, or behind the wall.
Depending on your home, the actual job of running patch cables behind the wall or under the house, and making both of its ends come out of the wall can be tricky. You might want to hire a handyman for that job, especially the part where you need to cut holes in the wall. In this post, though, I'm just talking about how you can make an Ethernet jack, with the ends of the patch cable already sticking out of the wall. Again, this is a CAT5e jack, also known as a RJ-54 Ethernet jack. A CAT6 jack has the same wiring, however.

What you need:
A punch-down tool: This tool costs about $20. I use a Trendnet TC-PDT, which incorporates a blade to cut off extra wires.
Ethernet jack and wall plate: As many as needed. Generally a set of one jack and one wall plate costs around $5. You can buy these separately and you can find a wall-pate that can house more than one jack.
The steps:
a. Use the stripping tool (or a pair of scissors) to strip the patch cable about 2-inches from its end. You can strip more than 2 inches if need be since the extra length will be cut off, but note that there's a limited amount of patch cable coming out of the wall so you don't want to cut it too short. Spread the 8 wires from one another. There's no need to put them in a particular order since the pins on the Ethernet jack are color coded.
b. Place the cable in the middle of the jack and push its wires on the pins of matching color for the 568B standard. This means that the orange wire goes into the orange pin, the blue wire goes into the blue pin, and so on. Technically, you can use the 568A wiring standard, but in this case you'd need to do the same with the other end. Generally, you want to avoid using 568A for network ports because it could cause problems in the future if somebody else repairs the port and uses the more common 568B standard.
c. Use the punch-down tool to punch these wires down on their pin in one quick motion. If you do it right, the wire will be punched down, and the excessive wires will be cut off.

Now you just need to install the wall plate and you are done with one network port. Now you can make another port at a different end of the house that connects to the port you have just made if you want to have just a single wired connection. For a home with multiple wired connections with devices being far apart, though, you should consider using a patch panel for the other ends of the (hidden) patch cables.
3. Wiring a patch panel.
If you want to have a wired network with many wall network ports coming out in different rooms of the house, it's best to use a patch panel at the central location where the router/switch and/or the home server is. A network patch panel is basically a collection of many wall ports on one panel, with each of the ports connected via a patch cable to another port elsewhere in the house. This allows for easy management of the wired network and better organization.