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Comment by readingnews | Hacker News Reader

Of all the things on the list, the third item

    RJ45 Join Adapters

Is one that has saved me (and others I work for) so many times. How many times have I been in some building/area without my network tool bag with two male RJ45s looking at one another and I am going, "hrmm I have to connect these".

I _literally_ just used one this morning... cable too short, no network bag in sight, but my laptop bag always has an RJ45 join adapter (not sure if that is the real name).

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I used to work backstage at concerts assisting my dad who was a sound engineer. We had my favourite cable of all time, a 30cm extension cord that was affectionately known as the "you've got to be #&$@ing me" cord. You'd run a 40m extension cord up and around the stage and get to the light you needed to plug in and you'd always be just short.

When I went into IT I quickly made myself some 30cm long Ethernet cables with a keystone on one end for just such an occasion.

I always called them 'couplers'.

They have saved me a few times too. When I was in the thick of IT, I used to carry a little tool kit with push down-tools for patch panels, screwdrivers, and an rj45 crimper. I carried it for years but only used it a handful of time, mostly on network wall sockets that hadn't been pushed down fully.

My geekiest item was a zip up case with my usb flash drives, with the usual Linux distros + Kali, Windows installers and of course Hirens boot USB (and cd!). Hirens was mostly just for resetting local admin passwords, but the disk recovery stuff was useful too.

I think I would be viewed with some suspicion carrying that in my new workplace!

"Join Adapters"

I always called them "Gender Benders". For all sorts of cables

The term I've heard used frequently is "butt connector" (presumably because it allows you to "butt-up" two connections). I, too, always carry some of these with me. They're extremely handy.

I've always seen these called inline couplers but only in the context of RJ45 and RJ11 for some reason.

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