DIY Emergency Ethernet Plug

Every once in a while, I need to make custom Ethernet cabling. Since I did not bother buying an appropriate RJ45 crimping tool, below are a few notes to manually crimp an RJ45 connector at the end of an Ethernet cable, in desperate situations. The quality of the resulting connection is much less predictable than with a proper tool, but with a lot of caution it works well enough to cover the occasional Ethernet hack emergency.

• Get an empty RJ45 connector housing

• Cut the CAT5 cable in a nice straight cut.
• Strip off about ~2cm/1inch of the jacket, then order the wires as follows:
  • white/orange
  • orange
  • white/green
  • blue
  • white/blue
  • green
  • white/brown
  • brown

• the tricky part: insert the wires in the RJ45 housing, and push until the wires block against the front of plastic housing, while ensuring that the wires stay in the same order:

• Use a small, thin, flat precision screwdriver like this one:

• Using the screwdriver and a small hammer, gently push each individual pin inside the plug, one by one. Here it is halfway done, with the three middle pins already hammered in:

• Also push in the plastic thingy that will hold the cable jacket itself, and finally install the plug cover (if any).

• Hope for the best and test the cable.