Monoprice Cat6A UTP Keystone In-Line Coupler RJ45-RJ45

I'm using these to connect an office computer to a network switch on the other side of the wall. I didn't feel comfortable punching my own jacks, so I got two of these and put keystone plates on opposite sides of the wall, and connected the two couplers with a 1ft Cat6 cable. This was to get wired networking to a home office when Covid hit and we needed a second workspace, and WiFi wasn't going to cut it for constant VPN and video calling. For a time, this worked perfectly. But after a few months, network connectivity became flaky -- sometimes to the point where it was more reliable to connect to the mediocre WiFi than to try to rely on the wired connection coming through these. I tested/replaced each link in the connection between the network switch and the office, swapping in multiple known-good cables and trying different devices, and I eventually narrowed the issue down to these. If you read the reviews for Monoprice's other in-line RJ45 couplers (of the Cat5e and Cat6 varieties) they all have reviews just like mine, where failure seems to be a matter of WHEN, not IF. The other varieties seem not to be direct passthrough connections, but instead connected via circuit boards. I purchased the Cat6a version because they didn't have any such reviews, and I hoped they'd fixed whatever the issue was in the higher-spec version. I haven't pried the Cat6a variety open to compare, but I'm assuming these are the same. I can't fathom why this would be cheaper or easier to produce than simply wiring the connections directly from one side to the other. I have opened an RMA to replace the two I bought. If they fail a second time, I will be looking at other products -- specifically, in-line passthrough RJ45 keystone connectors, which don't use a circuit board.

This works well, but with that being said you'd think buying the face plates from monoprice everything would fit into place but they will not snap i place. For this reason I gave this 3 stars. So beware.