What do these cables do?

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me understand this as I don't to a lot of physical network setup. It all seemed obvious until this point.

A customer has asked me to fill his pre-cabled (by BT) office with computers but there is one ethernet port that did not work whereas all the others worked as expected. I took the front off and found that the wires hadn't been connected so I went ahead with my krone tool and did what I thought had to be done but that did not work either.

The one difference about this port is the fact it has another pair of white cat5 cables alongside the normal purple cables that connect through to the switch. I don't know where the white cables go but they are connected together at this end by some clear plastic connectors using the the Blue/whiteblue from one and the orange/whiteorange from the other.



Does anyone recognise whats going on here?

Many thanks!!

So sometimes people will break out Cat5 cables and use a pair for a phone line or something so they don't have to run another line. I can't tell from the picture if those plastic plugs are for something to be plugged into or they are splicing the pair together somehow?

Not only can't I tell anything from the picture, I can't even SEE the picture.

They are butt connectors, not sure why they've connected those mixed pairs though.

derekimo said:

They are butt connectors, not sure why they've connected those mixed pairs though.

I concur that the white plug like thingies are splices (telco style quick connectors). And I also agree the installer probably either pulled the cable s/he had on hand or used that cable to allow for future expansion or to have spares on hand should a pair ever fail.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

derekimo said:

They are butt connectors, not sure why they've connected those mixed pairs though.

I concur that the white plug like thingies are splices (telco style quick connectors). And I also agree the installer probably either pulled the cable s/he had on hand or used that cable to allow for future expansion or to have spares on hand should a pair ever fail.

For some reason they have chosen to splice a blue and an orange in each of the connectors...

ThrashZone said:

Allot of things can happen to wires during installation.

Yes, they can, not really something we can diagnose from a picture though.

You need to trace them back or find the installer to get the answer.