How to Wire Your House With Cat-5 (or 6) For Ethernet Networking

Step 6 Testing Your Connections

Now before you start connecting most of the network components you want to test all the connections and make sure things are working. This can be done a number of ways. If you actually /have/ a network tester then you probably know what you're doing. You're on your own. However the method I used was a little different.

I plugged a short patch cable from my patch panel to each port on my switch and turned it on. Since it is a managed switch I set each port to be "up/up" and "auto negotiate" Unmanaged switches will not need to configure anything.

The next step is to take another patch cable and a laptop and plug it into each port in each room. Check the switch after each port and verify the "link" indicator is on. Being able to establish a link tests the physical layer (i.e. no broken wires, all tight crimps, no crossed wires), as well as the data link layer (i.e. negotiation between network card and switch port). No IP addressing or anything needed for testing.

This is also a good time to make sure your labeling matches on both ends. For example you can make sure that "Master Bedroom Port 2" on your patch panel actually goes to the second port in the master bedroom.

To the internet, and beyond!