Once you have the outer shielding off, decide on your wiring scheme and line the wires up appropriately, making sure to smooth out the twists in the wires so they lay flat. This minimizes the danger of damaging the wires inside. I recommend using single sharp razor, or one blade of a pair of scissors to score the outside of the shielding and then pull it off with your hands. That's what your couple of extra feet are for. Even if you only nick the shielding but do not cut the wire itself, you have already degraded your cable to the point where it may be unusable. Be careful that you do not cut or nick any of the smaller wires inside. This extra amount is for adjustments in length later on. Strip about 3/4 inch of outer plastic shielding from the end of the cable-to-be.

Too long is better than too short, however, remember that the maximum operable length of Cat-5 cable is 300 feet. It would suck if you went through all the work and made a perfect Cat-5 cable and then found it wasn't long enough. At least 2 RJ-45 Heads (more, if this is your first time crimping).Sure, it's got the same twisted-pair concept behind it, but the material is of far greater quality, and more pairs are used for a connection (4 pairs for Ethernet, as opposed to one pair for one telephone line.)ДЄFAIK, there's two different methodologies here-Д«oth 568A and 568B are wired the same way on both ends.ДЄnd of course, because we'll all need it someday:Д¬rossover (for connecting two machines without using an ethernet hub) Think of it as telephone wire on steroids. Category-5 cable is what you use to wire an Ethernet network.

Loopback cable run