Technical Difficulties

So, this afternoon was an IT afternoon. Found the AV software that had been lost and installed it (and the remote management software) onto the server. (Also copied the files from the CD there should the CDs go walking again.) And then started the old AV software uninstalling. When that came up and said it was going to take 120 minutes we decided to go look at the cabling for one of the houses that has been without internet for over a year or so.

We get to the house and go around back where the cable comes out of the ground. Let's see if you can tell me what's wrong (or at least what might be the problem) from a couple pictures:


And let's get you a close up:


Having seen this, I hacked off the ends of both RJ-45 plugs. I tried simply splicing the cables together, but that didn't work. So I recrimped both ends exactly as they were before, as that had worked sometime in the past. (Even though the cable from the ground had only the orange and green pairs in its plug. The blue was just loose and the brown I think might be used for their phone connection.) Once we made sure that the connection was good with the coupler back in place, we wrapped the whole thing in eletrical tape to give it some sort of protection.

Oh, and taped it up to the underside of the house in hopes that will keep it out of the dirt. And mud. And water.

(There was a spiget not 2 feet away and the gutter above this area had rusted through.)