How to crimp an RJ45 network connector

Although wired networks are fast becoming obsolete, with the proliferation of wifi routers and modems having built in wifi routing capability, there are still many situations where a wired network still makes sense, especially if you are concerned about hackers snooping on your network or if you just want a plain old wired network. So if you are setting up a network at home one of the important parts of your network would consist of that small nondescript component connected to a wire known as an RJ45 connector. Connecting the connector to the CAT5 or CAT6 cable is quite simple once you get the hang of it, but you have to keep in mind the sequence of colour code, I am going to highlight the basic – straight and crossover - crimping method and colour code here. This is a topic that has been covered in many sites, I just want to include the basic pictorial info without too much technical jargon.

You can buy pre crimped network cables, but you won’t get the exact length that you may want. If you want to crimp your own or if you just want to know how it should be done, read on.

You will need:

1). A pair of RJ45 crimpers, don’t buy the cheap ones unless you plan to use them only once or twice, get a good quality pair and you won’t regret the small investment.

Crimping tool for RJ45 (network) and RJ11 (telephone) connectors


2). RJ45 connectors


A pair of RJ45 Connectors

3). CAT5 (or CAT5E or CAT6) Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) Cable (the length will depend on how far away is the network hub from your workstation)

Cut the wire to the desired length then strip off about half an inch to expose the twisted pairs of wire there should be four twisted pairs making a total of eight different colours of wire. Do not strip off too much of the wire

After you have done this, untwist the half inch exposed pairs, flatten them and cut them with a wire cutter so that they are even at the edges.

Do not expose too much of the wire, this will result in data transmission problems, the picture below shows you how it should NOT be done



DO NOT make this mistake



For straight crimping, i.e., if you want to connect a desktop or a laptop to a network hub port, you will have to follow the 568B standard or more technically TIA/EIA-568-B standard. On both the ends of the cable the crimping has to follow the same colour code

568B Colour Code

For crossover crimping,

i.e., if you want to connect one computer with another

or link one hub with another hub

or link an adsl modem to a network hub, you will have to adopt the 568A or TIA/EIA-568-A standard on one end and the 568B or TIA/EIA-568-B standard on the other, so the ends of your wire should be connected like this



568-A to 568-B Crossover crimping



This is the pin position on the RJ45 connector

This is how the end product should roughly look like 

I hope this helps you with your network!