@dafyre No amount of string or pulling will get new cable from the basement to the top floor. It is simply ran through too many walls and takes too many twists and turns. I would likely rip the cord through the wall before I could just pull the new cord up. Trust me, I wish it was that easy. I am not particularly worried about my landlord, but from what I have seen and from how hard I pulled the wire just to see... Its not gonna happen without some serious work. The place is wired pretty badly. If I owned the place, I would fix all kinds of things and rewire the entire place.

As for the powerline adapters. I am just not convinced they are worth it except for certain situations. Basically, I don't think the powerline adapter will be any better than wifi on an AC router which I already have.

My original Question was not so much "how do I run cable" but "does anyone know a way to test the quality of a cable without a thousand dollar Fluke tester?" I think that information would be valuable to many people as well as myself in the future. So far it has boiled down to, plug shit in and try to use Netflix or similar.

Okay so long story short, I rent a house and want a couple wired connections instead of wireless for obvious reasons. The house is old and I rent, so running new cable to certain locations (aka the location I need) is pretty impossible without hiring a cable guy since I am terrible at fishing them through walls and floors anytime after dry wall goes up. There was an existing phone jack in the room which I removed and found (to my delight) 4 pairs of wires. I traced this wire to my basement which is where I need it to terminate where my router will be. The problem is, when I inspected the cable, it appears to me that the pairs are untwisted. Which I have never seen before (they could be twisted but just much less than I am used to seeing and I didn't want to strip enough of it to find out as it is run through flooring and walls to get there and I only have so much). In the basement, where the wire goes up through the flooring, it is run parallel to a power line and one can only guess how far as it is not visible again until the wall plate upstairs. (Worth noting that the cable is unshielded). I have seen flat cat5 where the wires are not twisted, but the twists are there for a reason, you shouldn't run unshielded cabling parallel to power, but this is my only option. Its a small house and not a long run, so I am thinking it might be okay but my OCD wants to test the cabling (for more than just continuity and I don't have 1000+ dollars for a fluke tester).

My plan so far is to make a short cross over cable and plug a laptop in upstairs and one downstairs and run iperf. However, I think iperf results might be influenced by the computer performance unlike a low level cable test like a fluke device would do. It also occurred to me to use wireshark or even a continuous ping to test for lost packets.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Carpet and baseboards is a good call, but I would have to managed that up 2 sets of stairs and I would rather not deal with it if I don't have to. I just terminated the ends last night and have not had time to test yet. I think Netflix is a great idea, I overthought myself way past that way of testing haha. Typical move for me to make. My only concerns are streaming and gaming (specifically "casting" my xbox one to a windows 10 machine). I suppose I should just plug shit in and give it a go.

Well at this point after reading more about cat3 cabling, I am almost certain the cable is cat3 standard. Which does not fair well for my plans. I am going to have to take a closer look over the weekend when I have more time. Reevaluate and decide what to do.

These can easily be deployed in poor countries to print houses. The best part in my opinion is the lack of a need for any concrete. These machines can print houses with nothing but dirt and water. For those of you that want the machine to build bigger perfect homes complete with duct work, electrical, and wiring that might not sound great, but for homeless people in poverty stricken countries that's a win.

@aaronstuder In comparision to wifi speeds (I have a decent AC router), do you get better performance with the powerline adapter? I see it is rated as 500 mbps, but I just have a hard time believing that.

Well at this point after reading more about cat3 cabling, I am almost certain the cable is cat3 standard. Which does not fair well for my plans. I am going to have to take a closer look over the weekend when I have more time. Reevaluate and decide what to do.

@dafyre No amount of string or pulling will get new cable from the basement to the top floor. It is simply ran through too many walls and takes too many twists and turns. I would likely rip the cord through the wall before I could just pull the new cord up. Trust me, I wish it was that easy. I am not particularly worried about my landlord, but from what I have seen and from how hard I pulled the wire just to see... Its not gonna happen without some serious work. The place is wired pretty badly. If I owned the place, I would fix all kinds of things and rewire the entire place.

As for the powerline adapters. I am just not convinced they are worth it except for certain situations. Basically, I don't think the powerline adapter will be any better than wifi on an AC router which I already have.

My original Question was not so much "how do I run cable" but "does anyone know a way to test the quality of a cable without a thousand dollar Fluke tester?" I think that information would be valuable to many people as well as myself in the future. So far it has boiled down to, plug shit in and try to use Netflix or similar.

@dafyre

I have given the tug test. That was my first move as it was my original plan. It will not work for this situation as it would be easier for me to just make a run a completely different manner. The cabling goes through a first floor into a wall, either under or over a set of stairs, into a different wall, into an electrical box with a small hole that has almost no wiggle room.

The cable is not spliced along the way. I have toned it out, terminated, and tested for continuity. I am sure it will be fine so long as the conditions I described (pairs are not twisted or twisted much less than normal, cabling is ran along with power, cabling is run for a short distance over a gas heater [this third condition will be remedied as I can easily run around the heater in the basement]).

Carpet and baseboards is a good call, but I would have to managed that up 2 sets of stairs and I would rather not deal with it if I don't have to. I just terminated the ends last night and have not had time to test yet. I think Netflix is a great idea, I overthought myself way past that way of testing haha. Typical move for me to make. My only concerns are streaming and gaming (specifically "casting" my xbox one to a windows 10 machine). I suppose I should just plug shit in and give it a go.

Okay so long story short, I rent a house and want a couple wired connections instead of wireless for obvious reasons. The house is old and I rent, so running new cable to certain locations (aka the location I need) is pretty impossible without hiring a cable guy since I am terrible at fishing them through walls and floors anytime after dry wall goes up. There was an existing phone jack in the room which I removed and found (to my delight) 4 pairs of wires. I traced this wire to my basement which is where I need it to terminate where my router will be. The problem is, when I inspected the cable, it appears to me that the pairs are untwisted. Which I have never seen before (they could be twisted but just much less than I am used to seeing and I didn't want to strip enough of it to find out as it is run through flooring and walls to get there and I only have so much). In the basement, where the wire goes up through the flooring, it is run parallel to a power line and one can only guess how far as it is not visible again until the wall plate upstairs. (Worth noting that the cable is unshielded). I have seen flat cat5 where the wires are not twisted, but the twists are there for a reason, you shouldn't run unshielded cabling parallel to power, but this is my only option. Its a small house and not a long run, so I am thinking it might be okay but my OCD wants to test the cabling (for more than just continuity and I don't have 1000+ dollars for a fluke tester).

My plan so far is to make a short cross over cable and plug a laptop in upstairs and one downstairs and run iperf. However, I think iperf results might be influenced by the computer performance unlike a low level cable test like a fluke device would do. It also occurred to me to use wireshark or even a continuous ping to test for lost packets.

Any ideas would be appreciated.