Cat6 Cable Installation: A Step-by-Step Wall Fishing Guide

what's up guys and gals welcome back I'm Michael Scott this is the ultimate Tech up today I'm going to show you exactly how to wire drop from one room to another I'm going to show you how to drop castic wires into a network panel like this then we'll run those castic wires from the attic into a different room down inside a wall and how to add a new ethet wall Jack from an existing wall jack in a different room and both of these installations are not difficult unless of course you don't have the right tools and yes of course all supplies and tools will be listed below at the very best prices so first we're going to start with the wire drop installation and this wire drop is for a one-story home with an attic these are the supplies and tools you'll need for this installation first you'll need some Cat 6 wire or cat 5e cat 5e is cheaper I recommend getting 500 ft you also need some RJ45 connectors and some boots for the wires you'll need some cat 6 wall jacks I bought a five pack and you also need an ethernet wall plate I have a two Port because I'm going to run two wires and we all know two wires are better than one okay now let's go over the tools you'll need for the installation you're going to need a cordless drill you'll need drill bits and for this install the bigger the better a crimping tool to terminate the network cable a wire stripper a hammer measuring tape a drywall saw [Music] saw safety glasses a flathead screwdriver and this is a great tool for wire drops the old bolt tied to a string this is kind of an old school way to do wire drops and don't worry I'll show you later just make sure the string is longer than the height of your ceiling so if your ceiling is 10 ft tall make the string 12 ft long you'll need a ladder for sure to access your attic and unless your attic comes with the ladder already and mine doesn't and two more things you might need a network cable tester and some tape now my plan is to do four wires um two will be for future use so I might as well just drop those four in here anyways I'll go ahead and terminate them and I'll just keep them kind of somewh down here the other two are going to go from here all the way up ceiling up here and we'll come down into this wall on the other side where our entertainment center is with our games our TV and our media so I'm going to run it from up top down and I'll go down here to the bottom I'll move everything out of the way and we're going to have two lines so that's the plan the first thing I did was clean the area so I could access the back of the wall for the wire drop then it's off to the dreaded attic this should be fun or not first thing I need to determine I need to figure out is where I'm dropping the wire through here down the wall I got to find the Cross Beam um you I have to get gloves on to find it to find where that wall is studded should be somewhere around here and then I'll start drilling for the cat 6 I'm going to drop two lines you always want to drop two lines when you're doing any kind of wire drops then back there is where the panel is and I'll drop all the wires down that panel should be pretty easy but the hard part is finding and this mess of U insulation blowing insulation it's going to be kind of tough to find it all right I think I've spotted where I'm going to start my drop it's going to be right over here the first thing we have to do is move the insulation out of the way we need to be able to see what we're walking on so simply move the insulation to expose the Raptors I mean Raptors you're looking for horizontal 2x4s you'll be walking on top of those once I moved all the insulation out of the way I can now see the location for the wire drop right under the small white wire is the board we're going to be drilling into so at this point you'll need a cordless drill and your largest drill bit for my situation I had to drill to two 2x4s stacked on top of each other your situation may be different but the bottom line you want to drill all the way through with a a big enough hole so you can feed down two cat stick wires okay just a heads up first thing I did was cut two wires about 80 ft each tap them together and we're going to drop two wires down that hole if you're going to do one just go ahead and do two it's good just in case one wire fails you have an extra one and also it's good for expansion if you want to add more more computers or whatever you want and by taping both these wires together it's actually easier to handle and fish on the wall for some reason the weight of the two wires makes it easier to drop down the wall cavity so keep that in mind and right here's a location of the hole and simply start fishing the wire through the hole and we are good to go so just feed it down as you feed the wire down the cavity of the wall you want to keep feeding that wire until you feel it hit the bottom of the floor once you hit the bottom of the floor stop feeding the wire and now it's time to go downstairs and find those wires in the wall and then we'll connect the wires to the wall jacks and then the face plate and here's the hole where the wires are going down and this is our two Port wall plate and we're going to install it right over there okay the face Plate's going to go about right here and with my calculations the cable is somewhere right here and I did take some measurements so I'm pretty sure the wires are right at this location and I'll make sure to line up the face plate so it's the same height as the power outlet so if you tap on the wall and it sounds Hollow then that means there's no stud if there's a thud that means there's a stud and also in these interior walls there are no fire stops however with exterior walls there are fire stops so now it's time to start drilling first a small pilot hole then we can cut it with a drywall saw and be careful with a drywall saw not to go too far into the wall if you go too far into the wall you may punch out the other side of the wall so be careful once the hole is big enough I can put my fingers through the hole to try to find the wires and lo and behold here are the wires amazing and just a heads up it's not always this easy I did get lucky so now it's time to terminate these two wires into these two c 6 wall jack plugs when you buy wall jack plugs it comes with a punch down tool the C 6 wall jack plug and a wire cover now I need to go ahead and terminate these into these plugs here so first thing use a wire stripper to expose the wires and then use the white string to pull down another inch to expose the wires just to make sure none of the wires are cut the next go ahead and separate the wires and because the lighting was kind of bad in this corner and it was kind of hard to see me wiring these up this is a previous video I did showing the wirec color connections so from bottom bottom left is white orange then orange then Brown then brown white use that punch down tool to make the connection solid now on the right side it's green green white blue white and then blue once again go ahead and use the punch down tool and go over all the connections one more time and trim off any excess wires then add the wire cover now this wall jack plug snaps right in to the wall plate and that's it it's easy next use a drywall saw to make the hole bigger it needs to be big enough for the one gang wall bracket and the wall bracket should snap right in and with the screw on the top right and the bottom left we'll tighten it to tighten the wall game bracket to the wall and that's it and now we simply connect our wall plate and that's it now back into the attic and drop the wires into the network panel all right so I'm going to use my good oldfashioned bolt with a string I'm going to drop it through the hole I just drilled over there when I he hit the bottom of the like this it hit the bottom of the panel should I'll tie the other end of the string to cat six wires two cat six and and then pull it down through so it's kind of dark back in the area where I'm going to drop this line the panel drop locations in the back very far back with no light so I'll show you the area where I'm dropping the line and then we'll see where the bolt comes out at the bottom I know it's kind of hard to see but those are the wires going down to the panel and we're going to drop that bolt on the string down the hole I got to say one thing it's 90° out today and up here it like 110 and for some reason using the string or the bolt on the end always works I don't know why it's better than wires or any fishing tool I guess cuz the weight of this brings it down and you can hear it from the top you can hear Clank when it when it hits something so it's you know it's gone through and this went all the way down through pretty cool so now I'll just pull the wires through hopefully we can just pull these wires through and voila we have success everybody clap now thank you so yes I Sav money I'm not using that $40 tool so I have two wires here I do want to do two more of these but not today it's 90° outside and that adds about 100° so all we have left to do is determinate these into RJ45 connectors and then I'll plug it into a TPL link 8 Port switch once again I'll show you a clip from a video that shows how to terminate cat 6 cables and we're using the t568b wiring diagram just make sure those wires are flat straight and in the correct order before you put it into the RJ45 connector and you will need a crimping tool to complete this process and that's it easy as pie and put that boot on for protection and this is the time lapse of the rewire of our Network panel all right everyone we're all done and our Network panel is rewired it's much more organized and we've added two new catti lines in our media room and now our media room is fully connected to the internet with two C six lines incredible all right guys and gals now we're going to install a brand new ethernet wall Jack from an existing wall jack in a different room and to make this even better I'm going to make this a two Port wall jack because more ports is more better so guys let me show you what my plan is for my new network wall jack I have a single wall that separates my family room for my master bedroom in our family room we have a network cable that comes out of the wall and connects to our TPL link eight Port switch this switch connects to our PS4 our Roku box our TV and a desktop computer so I have extra ports available on this switch so my plan is to plug a casic cable into the switch and run that cable through the wall into my master bedroom and that will connect to a new network wall plate and that wall plate will have a cat 6 Jack and this installation will look professional so now we'll have wired internet in our master bedroom so now let's take a look at the required tools for this installation you'll need a cordless drill various drill bit sizes a hammer a measuring tape and a drywall saw and here are a few more tools you may need wire stripper a pencil and a cripping tool if you're going to make your own patch cables so the first thing I'm going to do is measure from where the coax cable comes out of the wall in the family room and then I'll measure in the master bedroom that same distance so this way when I drill the hole from the family room into the master bedroom I have an idea where it's going to come out so now I'm going to take off the wall plate and this will allow me to see into the wall to where I'll be drilling it's really important to make sure the area I'm going to be drilling has no wires in front of it I saw no wires and I used a measuring tape just to tap onto the wall and we're good to go go the area behind my guitars is where I'm going to put this wall jack the hole will be near the bookcase so now you'll need a drill bit for your cordless screwdriver use the largest bit you have the drill bit I'm using is used to go through thick walls however you can use a smaller drill bit just make sure the drill bit is long enough so it can go through the other side and here will be the location of our new wall jack so now I'm going to use a drywall saw to en large the hole now it's time to connect the cat 6 Jack to the cat 6 cable this cat 6 Jack will cost around $5 you get the cat 6 wall jack you get the punch down tool and you also get a wire cover we also need some cat 6 cable this roll of cable is about 10 ft I'm going to cut it in half that's all I'm going to need after cutting the wire in half go ahead and strip back the blue wire cover so this end connects to the cat 6 wall jack and this end connects to the switch I have done a video on how to install a cix wall jack and here's a link to that video cut off the white string next unravel all the wires after you unravel all the wires it's time to place the wires into the wall jack slots and this is how you do it so the bottom left is white orange above that is orange orange make sure to use the punch down tool to push them all the way down the next color above the Orange is brown and above that is white brown once again use the punch down tool the wires need to go all the way down okay the left side is done time for the right side bottom right wire is green and above that is green white and next above that is blue white then above that is blue now take the punch down tool and push all the wires down just one more time and we're done next trim off any excess wire and now add the wire cover okay looks good we're ready to go next insert the castic wall jack into the wall plate next go ahead and feed the wire through the wall through the other side now I'll go ahead and plug it into the eight Port switch so now we're going to use the drywall saw to cut the opening for the one gang wall bracket and we'll do a test fit for the bracket to make sure it all fits and then lastly screw the bracket to the drywall and now we can add the second line and then the face plate right I'm going to add a little line right here and then right here is the hole back here you might be able to see it well I'll just run it through the other side of the wall and I'll plug it into our eight Port switch this will give us now two ports two ports are better than one all right so let's put the wire cap on top here put on and then we just simply slide it in there all right so it's going to look like this but I need to go ahead and terminate this to a RJ45 then I'll slide through here to the other side it's right here to there see like that so let's do that real quick and this is where it comes out this side of the wall right here where is it at there it is right here this is it plug it in there we go we now plug it into our switch and it goes through the wall all the way through that wall to your this side right here all right we're just going to screw this back in and we're done and that's how you add a two data Port wall plate by running a wire from a different room through the wall to the two-port outlet all right guys and gals make sure to check out these videos right here they're awesome and with that I'll see you guys and gals in the next video real soon