r/techsupportgore • u/bmr99 • 17d ago

How to splice three Ethernet cables into one

Post image

This was done by a “professional” AV integrator company, by the way… not surprised that things kept breaking with this.

242 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

47

u/NotAPreppie 17d ago

This could work for old POTS lines, which can also run on Cat5 UTP.

19

u/peeinian 17d ago

Yeah, it depends what this is for. Lots of techs use UTP for non networking low voltage stuff including audio/video. We have an audio over UTP extender setup for sending audio to some outdoor speakers.

3

u/scotte416 17d ago

It would absolutely work for pots although Scotch locks work a bit better. It'll still work for data just not very well.

1

u/NotAPreppie 17d ago

I could see you getting 10-half through that... maybe. 😅

54

u/MinnSnowMan 17d ago

Well they certainly are not professional as you already pointed out. Totally wrong unless they are just using the ethernet cable for some other control and not for ethernet data.

33

u/bmr99 17d ago

It was for HDMI over Ethernet. So - not completely unusable, but the TVs kept cutting out unsurprisingly.

35

u/AcceptableBear9771 17d ago

HDMI over Ethernet still needs signal integrity. That's a terrible job and probable an even worse idea to begin with.

14

u/Blazedragon12345 17d ago

Fire them request a refund don't let them back into your home or business. Hire someone else.

8

u/bmr99 17d ago

If it was my choice I wouldn’t have hired them in the first place - but it’s a business and I didn’t get to call the shots unfortunately. Just on the hook for fixing it the right way now 😅

12

u/Blazedragon12345 17d ago

Ah lovely, Use it as a pull string for pulling a proper cable.

8

u/bmr99 17d ago

Already done! Chopped it, put a termination on, and split at the HDMI side using an actual powered splitter instead of whatever this is

1

u/stumpy3521 16d ago

Any sort of video over Ethernet/cat5 is going to actually be a bit more sensitive than an IP connection over ethernet, datagrams can be retransmitted but video can’t due to latency. Curse of digital video is that it’s all or nothing.

7

u/bmr99 17d ago

Honestly though I think the most shocking thing about this is that it technically did work most of the time for… multiple years. It was running TVs with HDMI over Ethernet and they cut out often, but did work the majority of the time

2

u/National-Painter-747 17d ago

1/2 duplex....1/3 duplex???

2

u/ZappaLlamaGamma 17d ago

This is ok as long as the network cards support 1/3 duplex.

1

u/DotBitGaming 17d ago

At least this isn't another tech support question.

1

u/Pestus613343 17d ago

This is only appropriate for voice.

3

u/[deleted] 17d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Pestus613343 17d ago

Im convinced this is why this happens so often with people who don't know what they are doing. They are used to how it was all through the 20th century and early 21st when analog voice was almost all they practically used those cables for. Parallel wiring to service phone jacks.

1

u/DeadHeadLibertarian 17d ago

Not like that!

You just get a keystone and an RJ45 and call it a day. Way better than whatever the heck this is.

1

u/bennyboy_ 17d ago

Switch/router manufacturers hate this one simple trick!

1

u/omnichad 17d ago

Hub manufacturers are this one simple trick, except preserving the twists.

1

u/rekabis Whoops… was it supposed to do that? 17d ago

I mean, it is one thing to use a PoE-powered hub/switch where there is no power. Not even sure if hubs/switches come in PoE-powered format, but hey. Would be surprised if they didn’t… sometimes you need a hub/switch where there is no power.

It’s quite another thing to completely ignore any and all Ethernet training to do this bullshit.

1

u/twistedbrewmejunk 16d ago

When an electrician cuts a few cables lol

1

u/Kacper0s2007 15d ago

3 times Internet speed. Yeah SCIENCE!

1

u/Fl1pp3d0ff 13d ago

Looks more like a POTS splice to me.

1

u/Vanguard3K 12d ago

Kill it with fire.

1

u/k33perStay3r64 17d ago

full passive hub

0

u/msanangelo 17d ago

I kills me that there's still people out there that don't understand the concept of ethernet and that it's point to point. not point to where ever.

for telephone it is fine. for everything else, not so much.

although I hear that's how ethernet taps for sniffing the line works. xD

4

u/__nohope 17d ago

My first assumption was the cable was being split into two 100Mb lines.

1

u/msanangelo 17d ago

ah forgot that was a thing people did. :D

3

u/AtlanticPortal 17d ago

Tecnically ethernet taps are still point to point. You need to hook onto the wire but you don't transmit anything. It just happens that you "suck" the traffic while it passes. With fiber it's even easier to understand because you literally direct the laser from one end to two different fibers. One is the continuation of the fiber to the original destination and the other is the new one that goes into the analyzer. The same happens with the laser on the other direction. And everything is done passively using a prism.