Ethernet cables are all often too long or too short. Home networking can be a nightmare and sometimes you need just enough cable to patch two ethernet ports together. Commercially available tiny cables bottom out at round 10 centimeters. Too long! But can you go smaller? Well, ethernet cables are easy to crimp together yourself, and industrious folks on Reddit are currently engaged in a race to see who can make the shortest working length of ethernet. The results are stunningly small.
As first spotted on Hackaday, this all began a few days ago when Redditor aayo-gorkhali posted a short little bit of ethernet cable on r/Ubiquiti. Ubiquiti is a brand of networking hardware and aayo-gorkhali needed a small length of cable to attach a networking access point to an ethernet port on the wall. He crimped himself a length of cable just over 2 inches long. People on Reddit immediately thought they could get that length shorter.
First up was darkw1sh who connected two RJ-45 connectors mounted ass to ass with a little bit of cabling protecting the wires within. After that, Josh_Your_IT_Guy entered the fray posting a pic of two connectors joined together with no cabling. It was just over 1 inch long. “A belt sander may have been used,” Josh_Your_IT_Guy said.
Is an ethernet cable shorter than an inch possible? Yes, yes it is. rickyh7 patched together two shaved down RJ-45 connectors that are just over 1 centimeter long. “We were so preoccupied with whether or not we could we didn’t stop to think if we should,” said his post’s title. It’s a stunning victory for small patch cords, but redditors demanded proof that it worked
It’s just a little guy. Photo via rickyh7 on Reddit.
rickyh7 obliged with a video of him using the small ethernet cord in a connection tester. “You savages wanted it, here you go,” he said on Reddit. “Iperf next?”
There has been no update since. As of this writing, we must assume that rickyh7 had won the contest for the tiniest working ethernet cable. The prize is simply the upvotes they earned on Reddit and the clout that comes with making a quality shitpost.