Both in my work building networks with the Personal Telco Project and otherwise, I have crimped many many ethernet cables, customized to a particular run. It is a useful and empowering skill to cultivate. That said, it isn't fast and it isn't always reliable. I once joked that if I was employed in the Chinese Prison Labor camps where commercial cables come from, I would sleep many nights without my bowl of rice for having failed to deliver my daily quota past quality control. One of the things to have, *in addition to the crimper* and tips, is a tester. When crimping a custom length you are typically crimping two ends. Your cheap $10 tester will only tell you that at *least* one of the ends is bad, but not which one. Which leads to close inspection, best guesses, re-crimping and retesting. Sometimes your best guesses are wrong, or (indistinguishably) you screwed up the re-crimp too. Eventually, we invested in a $500 Fluke Microscanner 2. That will tell you *which* end you screwed up.
There is definitely a place for commercially crimped patch cables. -- Russell Senior [email protected]
