Cat 6 cable faff-on

Terminating ethernet cables isn't fun at the best of times in my experience but when you need to run a long cable outside, starting from a reel of bulk cable, there's not a lot of choice - unless you plan to buy a standard (long) length and coil the excess somewhere. And even then, unless you want to blast a massive hole in the wall, you'd need to terminate at least one end of the cable after routing it.

I'm hoping to receive an IP cam in around a week from now. This is powered over ethernet (PoE), so needs a cable to run from the router room under the stairs, along the outside wall and up to the planned position above the front door, where it can spot callers and sneakers entering through the front gates.

So, I have a reel of Cat 6 (shielded UTP) that claims to be good for outdoor use. Not sure what the outer covering is but it could be polythene or PVC. The black colour probably gives it some UV resistance, although time will tell on that front.

Recently I had another partial tidyup in the garage /workshop area. The main result of that isn't a noticeable increase in tidiness or clear workspace. However, I recall tidying away the ethernet crimp tool and cable tester. There's only so long I can be arsed to search high and low for it, so I had to get another one. This one actually looks a bit better than the mislaid one, so some good may come from it.

But of course, it isn't obvious that this is going to make the task of threading the individual wires through the shells themselves any easier, which is where the challenge generally lies. 

It seems to me that I may as well terminate the end of the reel, ready for the camera when it arrives. And in fact I may as well terminate both ends - I can then have a choice of 2. Or I have a spare if I screw one up, more likely.

First problem - this cable is too large to fit through the cable relief shell. Perhaps this is due to the cable being allegedly suitable for outdoor use. Not certain I need this in the first place but I may as well have a go at bodging it on before dismissing it.

The cable OD is around 7.3mm. So reaming it out with a 7.3mm drill might help.

It just about goes on here. You need to do this before crimping the shell on, obvs.

This is the trickly bit. The normal advice is to strip back 20mm but that makes poking all 8 wires into the correct holes almost impossible. Instead, I found that stripping back 30-40mm gave me more of a fighting chance. This way, it's a lot easier to start the bare copper wires, rather than hope for all 8 of them to magic their way into the correct positions in the shell. The excess gets cut off by the tool when it crimps the shell. These shells are called "pass through", since they allow the individual wires to, well, pass right through like this.

Like this. Although The Stupid Fat Bloke forgot to push the cable relief into the shell before crimping. Doh. If you don't do that, you might as well cut it off unless you want to start all over again. I cut the relief off.

Have another go, this time at the other end of the reel:

So this one has the cable relief fitted as recommended. I'm not sure that's of any use anyway, as this will be a static installation and the connection will be sealed inside a little junction box within the camera mount. 

Let's call it practice for when I run the cable into the house and have to terminate it for real. 

It would be handy at this stage to use the cable tester but, given that it was sitting coiled up on my bench, it was simple enough to beep it through. Hopefully the tester will get itself found within the coming week or so. If not, I'll just have to be very careful to get the wires into the shell correctly and ultimately find out if the camera likes what it is connected up with.