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Handmade vs. Commercially Produced Ethernet Cables
An anonymous reader writes "We have a T1 line coming into our satellite office and we rely fairly heavily on it to transfer large amounts of data over a VPN to the head office across the country. Recently, we decided to upgrade to a 20 Mbit line. Being the lone IT guy here, it fell on me to run cable from the ISP's box to our server room so I went out and bought a spool of Cat6. I mentioned the purchase and the plan to run the cable myself to my boss in head office and in an emailed response he stated that it's next to impossible to create quality cable (ie: cable that will pass a Time Domain Reflectometer test) by hand without expensive dies, special Ethernet jacks and special cable. He even went so far as to say that handmade cable couldn't compare to even the cheapest Belkin cables. I've never once ran into a problem with handmade patch cables. Do you create your own cable or do you bite the bullet and buy it from some place?"
But how much value does your job (when you aren't crimping cables) bring to the company per hour?
That value plus your hourly pay needs to be more than the amount saved per hour spent crimping over just buying the things.
The "make it exactly the right length" argument seems more valid, unless you earn very little or produce very little.
I believe that was not the comparison he was making.
The point was that if you earn more than $20/hour it is a waste of your valuable time to be making cables whilst you could be doing the work you are paid to do.