STRAIGHT THROUGH
-Cut a piece of cable to the length you will need. Give a little extra to
make room for mistakes.
-Strip a half inch to an inch of the outer jacket away from the cable. If
you use strippers make sure not to nick the wire pairs and expose the
copper, this could introduce crosstalk onto your wires. I prefer to use
a scissor and my fingers to tear away the jacket. Then I cut with the
scissors to clean up the edge.Now you need to untwist the wire pairs
(not too much, only undo one or two twists) so you can align them
according to the EIA-TIA568B wire color sequence. I use my fingers to
straighten the wires by bending them back and forth, straightening
them as they warm up.
-Lastly, test your cable by using it on your network. Attach the cable
to your computer's NIC and the other end to your switch. Do you see
green lights? Open the Network Connections dialogue box in
Windows, does it show a properly enabled and active connection on
the NIC. You can also look for the status in your system tray network
connections icon. If you have an internet connection, can you browse
the web? If not can you ping your gateway from a command prompt?