I believe the cable is Cat 5e.

It's possible the cable is damaged. I was getting some connectivity earlier, though, and I would have thought it was an all or nothing kind of deal.

I'm currently trying to set up two WRT54GL's for WDS but that's not going well either. I can't seem to get the two to pair. I've been following some instructions I've found online (the Tomato site, I have Tomato installed), but none of the instructions I've found deal with the type of setup I'm using. They all assume the first router is the main router, when I want hang the first router off the edge of the network, essentially as a WAP, and connect the second router to it over WDS. I'm not sure how to configure the first one, though. I've turned off DHCP, but I don't know of I should do that or not. It looks like I have everything configured correctly, with perfectly matching wireless configurations (SSID, channel, encryption, password, etc - everything except IP addresses), but it won't work...

*edit*
D'oh! I was using the wired MAC addresses for each router. I switched them to the wireless MACs and everything's working. Well, at least it is in the same closet, we'll see what happens when they're 200' apart.

After this I can look into the wired connection more. I just needed to get them up and working with any kind of connection!