Wiring the house with cat6

Last week we moved in to our new house. I decided I wanted cat6 ethernet between my office - where the comcast modem (ARRIS SB6183) and my router (Asus RT-AC88u) sit, and my TV (with an Nvidia Shield TV media streamer). Sure, I have a nice router, with a solid client which both support 5GHz AC Wi-Fi, but I’d always prefer a wired connection where possible. Denisse had hired a handyman to do some repairs around the home, so she asked him to do this. I purchased all the necessary equipment, including 100ft of Cat6 cable. He installed this while I was at work. I got home that night and pulled out my network tester, eager to see close to gigabit speeds. I was pretty disappointed to discover that the connection didn’t work. After digging in, it became obvious why.

First, I noticed that a section of cable had electrical tape over it. I removed it to understand why, and found this :(.

Second, I saw the connection on both sides of the ethernet jack.

I again removed the electrical tape

And then removed the lid.

It had been 10 years since I last wired ethernet, but after a quick google search, I was done. Here is the finished product:

Here’s to a perfect internet connection at my TV with zero risk of flaky Wi-Fi! (it’s important when you kid really wants to watch Thomas the Tank Engine!).