How can I connect the ethernet cables in my home to make them work?

Question

We recently moved to a new place that has ethernet wiring. Initially we didn't use it, as I set up a wifi network using eero. I recently decided to explore how I can use it, especially to connect a NAS. I've a few things including using a laptop to try and find out which wiring delivers internet through each of these cables. However, I can't figure it out.

The questions I have are:

1. how can I figure out how the wiring works, and
2. how can I use this network?

Thank you!

Following is some more detail about the wiring in the house.

Currently, we have our internet delivered through a fiber optic cable to the house. I've connected the output of it to the eero router:

This is the wiring I have in the garage, including a tp-link TL-SG116 and a Leviton T568A:

There are 4 wires coming from behind the DSHOT box, labeled office, back room, living room 1, and living room 2. I suppose there are corresponding outlets in each of those rooms:

However, in the living room, there are two wires that I suspect are the other ends of the two wires labeled living room 1 and living room 2 (but I'm not sure):

I've connected each of those two wires to the eero ethernet port and tried connecting the other one to my laptop. However, that didn't seem to work.

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Update:

Using the suggestions in here I was able to verify that most of the wiring actually works. Out of the 7 wires coming out of the switch I was able to label 5 of them. The other 2 (including the white wire labeled Living Room 1 showed no sign of life. If I find a way to diagnose those, I will. However, for now I'm not sure how to do that.

Answer 1

Plugs crimped on wall cables are notoriously unreliable.

Wall jacks (or punchdown patch panels) are much more reliable.

Labels may be wrong. I note that the cables are labeled, but the ports on the patch are not labeled.

If the switch is powered up (looks it) you should see a link light if the far end of the cable that it's patched into is live (such as plugged into your laptop, even if it doesn't connect to anything else and "get network") if it connects to the switch the light for that port should go green at the switch.

At least this appears to have been set up for ethernet, not phone, but that doesn't mean it was done well. It probably is recoverable, but before investing much I'd try really fundamental basics like "do any of the cables make a connection when you plug into them" (even if they don't lead to the right room) and "are the places that patch cables are plugged into on the front of the patch panel actually corresponding to where the cables are connected on the back?"

You'll probably want to spend the $5-10 on a basic pair tester for ethernet that will plug two parts into opposite ends of the same cable to test it (such as they do.) You don't need to, but it's not too expensive.

However, upon re-reading your question, as commented, I think you're not doing your testing well. Plug in a living room cable. Go out to the garage, plug your laptop into the patch panel (and/or look to see if the switch now has link on one port - if so, plug into another port on the switch.) If that works, you have some basics. If it doesn't work, try the other cable, and do pay attention to the possibility that maybe one of those cables actually goes to port 2 or 6-12 on the patch panel (or pull it off the wall and check where they go.)

If you get signal into the switch, you should be able to get signal out to the other cables in the house. But if all the far ends are plug-on-wall-cable, expect at least one if not more to be bad. Replace them with punch-down jacks.

Answer 2

You've been left with a bit of a rat's nest of poorly labelled connections.

One of the plugs into the tp-link switch should connect back to your network router. The rest should connect to sockets in different rooms. That switch helpfully has LED indicators on each socket to tell you what is happening. No lights = no connection. Steady light = something connected, but no data flowing. Flashing light = data flowing. So if no lights are flashing, you have no connection to the router and nothing is going to work.

Try connecting the laptop stright to the tp-link switch and see if you get a connection. If you do, then it's worthwhile trying to trace all those wires and seeing what goes where.

PS. On some laptops, turning on the WiFi turns off the Ethernet port. You may need to turn off the WiFi, or see if there is a setting to turn on both hidden away somewhere.