Ethernet – RJ45 Female wall plate cat ratings

As I recall (and I will admit I am too busy ATM to go research this myself), the RJ standards define the mechanical characteristics of the connector (shape, size, contacts, etc). They do not define the manner of crimping the connector to a cable.

Each manufacturer could make their own decisions on the manner of crimping, but there isn't really much you can vary in this process. The result is that there were two major crimp dies and types of connectors that provided at least the majority (or possibly the entirety) of the market.

This is true prior to Cat6. With Cat6 it is more difficult to adhere to the standard when making terminations, as you have very little room to "untwist" pairs and need to maintain proper separation of the pairs.

This led to a whole new range of connector products and tools that may or may not be compatible with older tools. For instance, I have seen Cat6 connectors where you wire the cable to an "insert" that is then inserted and crimped into the connector.

Morale of the story is that you need to do your research and make sure that you are getting connectors that work with your current tools or buy the right tools with the connectors. On top of that you need to know what you are doing or you may produce cables that will only pass a Cat5 certifications at the extra costs of Cat6.

My advice generally, and especially if you are looking to do Cat6 or better, buy your cables pre-manufactured. The failure rate of hand made cables is much higher and can cost more in troubleshooting/downtime in the long run. Especially since many of these are made in organizations that are "trying to save money" and also don't have the tools to properly test the cables they are making (certification testers are not cheap).

My suggestion would be to wire the socket as a single connection and then if you later decide to use it as two cables, just use a splitter (a little piece of cable with one plug and two sockets) at both ends. Just make sure to get a splitter for Ethernet (which connects two pairs to one socket and two to another) and not ISDN (which just connects both sockets in parallel).

Connecting the wires to two sockets in parallel may cause signal problems for the gigabit connection and you (or someone else) will forget to use it correctly at least once and plug one end of the cable as a single connection while connecting two computers at the other end.

Upd.

Internal wiring of ethernet splitter

Splitter kind 1, kind 2 useful for patchpanel