Morning all,

I need to wire some LAN network sockets in my house. I've ordered the sockets, got the cable and got the patch leads.

I note for installing the cable into to rear of the sockets I'll need a "punch down" tool.

I have a punch down tool I bought years ago for doing phone sockets.

Will this do the same job or do I need a different tool?

Thanks
Nick

ISTR that the phone one can be used by cutting a piece away, although I am not 100% sure.

However, if you've got a Toolstation near you, then Punch-down tool will both punch the core down into the connector and trim the excess length off, in one go. I have found it far better than the basic, plastic versions. Screwfix sell them as well, but at twice the price.

Hi Steve,

Thanks for replying.

The one in the Toolstation link looks just like mine. I'm likely to try mine first. If it's no good I'll get the Toolstation one to try.

Thanks,
Nick

Ah, you should be fine then. I had assumed that you were referring to the very cheap, solid plastic, phone type, that have an overhanging leg that can get in the way with a network socket.

screwfix have the same type a bit cheaper: linky

or a lot cheaper on amazon if you can wait for it: linky2

but if your one looks the same its probably fine - to be honest you could do it with a small screwdriver (or 2 or push the cable down on both sides) and trim off the cables after - but these tools do make it easy and reliable...

I've not long finished extending the house and went a bit OTT with 4x or 6x CAT6 into every room in the house (except the bathroom) some for LAN, some for phone, some for HDMI - the downstairs cupboard is starting to look like a mini data center - and all the sockets worked first time with that type of cheap punch down tool

[Edited on 29/12/2020 by mcerd1]

Hmm, that one didn't show up when I did a search on Screwfix, only one at twice the price. Their search tool can be a bit flaky.

We also have a lot of ethernet cable, but CAT5E. We have 4 ports on the router and 23 on the network switch (upgraded from a 16-port as we were running out. Plus 4 wifi lans one private with access to our internal network and three "public" that are directed straight to the internet and have no access to our internal network - adult, child and handheld games consoles (poorer encryption for some old devices that cannot be upgraded).

We only have one hard-wired phone (a very old, Bakelite, rotary dial one, with fabric covered cable - the rest are cordless, so the existing sockets are now redundant.

We don't distribute HDMI. Instead we have a multiswitch distributing twin satellite feeds to each room and individual boxes, sharing the hard-disk of the one in the living room - although that is due to be changed to diskless too, with storage being on our home server. So we can record and watch on any box - even moving from one box to another mid-way through playback or, if one box needs to record, but its tuners are already committed, it can "borrow" a tuner on another box.

[Edited on 30/12/20 by SteveWalker]

Thanks for the additional input people. I've done phone sockets in my house (hence having the tool).

One of my kids has an X Box, which has Wi Fi, but just works much better with a wired connection. It's not a massive job to route a cable through a couple of stud walls and across the loft to achieve this (and more peace). A job for next weekend.

Thanks again.