Er, just to make it clear, we're not saying that -in your words - you should run Cat5 and mains cables 'together but perpendicular'. Instead, we're saying that you should keep the Cat5 cabling and mains cabling as far away from each other as possible but that, if their routes do meet at some point, that the cables cross ar right-angles to one another. These two descriptions are not the same.

If you are going to crimp the plugs onto the solid core cable then you will run into problems. Most of the plugs available are not designed for crimping onto solid core cable. Although they will work at first they eventually fail.
Best option is to terminate onto faceplates and use short patch leads.

The Belkin tool is more than adequate for the amateur user, and sells for less than a tenner.

was about to order my list of networking goodies from www.minitran.co.uk, untill i came across THIS special offer at a site called www.blackbox.co.uk.

The reel and panel work out to

Edited by boaby (Fri 29-Sep-06 15:42:45)

Black box stuff is usually ok, they are normally on the expensiive side but that deal looks decent. Would check the delivery costs as they are sometimes rather costly.

yeah, did notice alot of their prices are jacked up which is why i was looking for the fault with that deal. i'll give it a go and get the rest elsewhere.

thanks everyone for the help!

thought i'd post this for anyone in the same (or soon to be) situation as me.

following up on that offer i posted earlier i phoned blackbox up and asked if they would combine two offers they're doing on the site, offer1 and offer2.

they got back to me an hour later by email and quoted me:

01 x 24 port patch panel (vertical idc mounts and tabs for cable management)
24 x 0.9m cat5e patch leads (you can choose your colors)
01 x 335m cat5e grey cable

for

Edited by boaby (Mon 02-Oct-06 17:18:04)

Use them for some of the more obscure networking stuff (protocol convertors etc). Don't use them for the day to day kit as get better deals elsewhere.