RJ45 Cat6A Shielded Metal Keystone Jacks

These were MUCH easier to use than passthrough connectors, and more reliable. Added CAT 6A to my home instead of powerline (old house, can't blame powerline for that), and these were a MAJOR time saver vs trying to get CAT 6A CMX into CAT 6 ends for couplers, and one fewer transition. If you are looking at couplers, THESE ARE MUCH BETTER. The couplers I got work ok, but are much more difficult to put on when you are down on the floor. I have a crimping tool, but not a punch down tool, so major win there, as well. As I only have 4 runs to do, the tool would probably have cost a significant percentage of these. What to do with the couplers, now? Grateful from a 50+ year old man - saved my knees!!

I had to start changing over much of the LAN in my home network, and these keystone ends have been a huge time saver. At first, I was a little put off by the cost, but these particular keystones are toward the less expensive of what is available, but they have proven to be worth every penny. As for installation, they are a complete breeze. I've been punching down network connectors for years, and I have never found such an easy design. Just take your time, follow the very clear directions, and you'll be done in no time at all with really great quality connections. I'm now on my second order so I can continue to upgrade my network al lot CAT6a and this is the product that I'm going to stay with.

Like some people said here, it is hard to cute flush to the plate. If even a little is put it will touch the enclosure and you will get a short like what some people mentioned. You can see on the pictures attached that it is just coming out a little bit.It says it works with 22awg to 26awg wires. I am using 23awg copper wires and it doesn't bite into the wire when you close it. You can tell on the picture that it barely cut the plastic outer layer of the wire. Which means it did not terminate correctly.I bought another terminator/crimp tool from EMS and used their proprietary keystone and it terminates just fine. Plugged it into the switch and recognized it immediately.Also, the plastic tab on top of the key stone broke off very easily when I needed to remove it from the plate.Maybe it will work fine on thinner wires or I needed to get a special punch tool to push down the wires into the key stone. Either way, it doesn't work well with the wire and tools I had.

We decided to finally install ethernet cable throughout our house. We opted for 6A 26AWG cable (Cable Matters), with T568B wire configuration.We had many ups & downs throughout the first few, but now we have 4 of the 12 jacks installed. What would have helped is to FIRST review the photo directions here on this listing!A few things we had trouble with along the way:1. We were following instructions from other sites on how to place the wires onto the jack, which worked okay but was problematic at times. This is where the photos in this listing come in handy! Makes more sense to lay the wires out as seen in Photo #4 because of the cable enters the jack at a 90 degree angle.2. The keystone jacks did not stay secure in the basic wall plates we purchased so we had to use electrical tape.3. We didn't realize the metal hinged parts can be removed, making it easier to place the wires and to trim them.

Some work some don’t. Spent so much time messing with these. Not with the headaches

I bought a few dozen of these for making avionics test cable "pig-tails". I have LAN cables that go from box to box and to a network switch. Instead of making the test cables a certain length, I made them 18" long and put these female RJ45 on the end. Now, all you have to do is put a section of CAT5 or CAT6 in the middle and you are good to go. These are rebuildable and easy to make. I wish the hole that the build cable was a little bigger around. You can't really fit the big CAT6 shielding through it. I also wish there was a little more strain relief, as well.

Wanted to respond on the joys of installing using these "tooless" units. I installed 10 of these into my home network cables and found the initial deployment rather straight forward until it came time to test the terminations. 9 out of 10 of the terminations failed with at least one problem. After some tweaks to the installation process, 10 out of 10 units work great now. Here is what I did:1) Don't rely on the metal frame to provide the clamping force to "punch down" the cables. I used a small metal rod and hammer and tapped down all 4 corners of the plastic wire holder into the jack punch block directly. (Had zero loose connections on all jacks after that.) Then close the metal frame till it latches.2) ALL of my termination issues were caused by the clipped wires grounding out to the metal frame! This was after trimming them back as far as possible. Solution? Small strip of black electrical tape on both sides between the wire ends and the metal frame (before you latch the metal frames together)....worked perfectly.After applying both solutions, these jacks work great. If the above sounds like too much trouble, then you might want to look else where, otherwise they are OK on the price per unit side.

I really like this keystone, the all metal body makes it very sturdy and very easy to attach the drain wire. Not needing a punch down tool is really quite handy and helps ease the difficulty of keeping the twists close to the termination point (to maintain the CAT 6 specs). Its great for smaller jobs, the expense would really add up for a larger install.I'd recommend using a lineman's pliers to compress the cable before inserting into the pressure cover though: makes it much easier. I was using direct bury shield cable so I was dealing with a much thicker than normal cable.