DIY: Make Your Own Ethernet Loopback Cable

Do you ever find yourself needing to know whether an ethernet port will light up without actually hooking it up to a switch. Or, do you need to know what port on a switch a certain jack is plugged in to. Lucky for you, it’s really easy to make your own ethernet loopback cable.

To start, you’ll need a couple of tools: a wire cutter and a wire stripper. You’ll also need some electrical tape. And, last you’ll need an ethernet cable that you don’t mind cutting up.

Steps:

  1. Cut about 12" off of the end of the cable
  2. Strip off about 2" of the outer insulation
  3. You should see 8 wires paired up (Orange, White-Orange, Green, White-Green, Blue, White-Blue, Brown, and White-Brown). Un-twist each pair.
  4. Strip about an inch off of these four: White-Orange, White-Green, Orange, and Green
  5. Wrap the exposed wires together matching White-Orange to White-Green and Orange to Green
  6. Cover the exposed wire with electrical tape
  7. You can ignore the other 4 wires
  8. Plug the cable into either a network card or a switch. If it was done correctly the link light should light up.
  9. Wrap the end of the cable with tape to "neaten" it up a little
  10. Of course, you’ve still got the other end of the cable, so you might as well make another

I’ve seen this around the internet for anywhere from 5 bucks to 50 bucks. So, aside from the cost of a few feet of tape, a spare ethernet cable, and some time; you’ve saved yourself 50 bucks (or 100 if you made two :-) )


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5 Responses to DIY: Make Your Own Ethernet Loopback Cable

  1. mike says:

    so if i want to have a LAN IP to ping a virtual machine on my computer, i will need a loopback cable? cause overwise without a cable in my ethernet slot, i keep geting “media disconnected” in CMD

    • sean says:

      What???
      Why would you interface a virtual machine with a loopback directly? If the host machine has no working NIC, what would a loopback cable do?

  2. Ryan says:

    Never done anything with a virtual machine that needed a network connection to the main computer. I would assume they already had some type of virtual connection built in. Or at least a way to share files between the virtual machine and your actual machine.

  3. robert says:

    Clear, concise instructions. And they work! Who could ask for anything more.

  4. is it ok if the wire order is different because on mine it shows that its different