Spent 4 hours troubleshooting a network drop that turned out to be a bad keystone jack

Was working on a small office rewire last Tuesday afternoon. Had one wall port that just would not link up at anything above 100Mbps. Checked the patch panel, tested the cable run with my Fluke, all good there. Tried different switch ports and even swapped the patch cable. Finally pulled the faceplate off the wall and found the keystone jack had a wire that was barely making contact. Must have been a bad crimp from the factory. Replaced it and boom, instant gigabit. Has anyone else run into factory defective keystone jacks or am I just unlucky?

3 comments

3 Comments

wadebailey2mo ago

Man "barely making contact" is the kind of thing that makes you want to throw the whole keystone across the room. I have run into this a couple times, usually with the cheaper bulk packs from Amazon, and it always wastes way more time than it should. Glad you got it sorted, those intermittent issues are the absolute worst.

shah.ben2mo ago

Yeah I've had the same thing with those cheap keystones. What I started doing is taking a tiny flathead screwdriver and gently bending the little metal contact pins up just a hair before I snap the keystone together. Seems to help them grab the plug better right out of the gate. Also I've found that some of the Amazon bulk ones have a really thin plastic shell that flexes too much when you snap the cable in, so the pins don't stay seated. If you feel that flex when you push the plug in, just toss that keystone and grab another one from a different batch. Saves you the headache of chasing a ghost connection later.

wendygrant28d ago

I actually have to push back on "barely making contact" being a problem with the keystones themselves. I've used mostly Amazon bulk packs for years and honestly I wonder how many of these issues are from people not punching the wires down deep enough or getting the pairs untwisted too far back. I've had way more trouble from bad crimps on the plugs themselves than from the keystones. If you take your time and use a good punchdown tool those cheap ones work fine for home use.