Cat5 Cable Order Argument

[Über~PhLuBB]

I've got a friend who says that color matters when you make Cat5 cables.

I say no, color does not matter, just so long as the cables are in the same order on each side (checking by holding up each plug side by side and looking).

So which is it? We got $60 and a whole dumptruck full of pride riding on this.

[Zigma]

i happen to be that friend.

[Jon]

Makes no difference. The only difference in the wires inside are their color coding and there is a standard in which they are aligned. It's the same as twisted pair telephone cable. The copper wires in it are all the same, they just are coded differently to adhere to telco wiring standards...ethernet is no different.

If you want to make your own personal standard for it, you'll have no problem doing it.

[Über~PhLuBB]

Originally posted by Jon
Makes no difference. The only difference in the wires inside are their color coding and there is a standard in which they are aligned. It's the same as twisted pair telephone cable. The copper wires in it are all the same, they just are coded differently to adhere to telco wiring standards...ethernet is no different.

If you want to make your own personal standard for it, you'll have no problem doing it.

You've just made me $60 richer and 10 times prouder. Thanks.

Zigma, you may commence kissing my feet. *turns nose up*

[Zigma]

o god no, you can thank livepc.tv for this.

[philihp]

Hi, i made As on all the cisco academy semister exams.

in answer to your question, it does, and it doesn't... it depends on how you're thinking about it.

Each pair of wires in the Cat5 cable is twisted to reduce electromagnetic interfearance (EMI). When wires are twisted, the electromagnetic fields cancel out mostly.

They're also then twisted a different number of times per meter, to reduce crosstalk and interferance between the pairs of wires. When a wire is sent current thru it, and is placed next to another wire with no current, some current will come thru it (if you want to know why, you'll find out in any high school physics class).

The 4 pairs of wires are then twisted together (again to reduce EMI). The attenuation of Cat5 is much better than phone cord (cat3 i believe? which is just 4 wires usually run side by side).

Each striped wire is paired with its solid colour wire. If you crimp your ends to standard, your transmit positive, and your transmit negative wires will be twisted around eachother within the cable, and your recieve + and recieve - will be twisted.

When a signal is sent thru either wire, the EMI cancels out along the distance, so you get a better signal, and throughput, and can run cable longer distances. If you were to have your Tx+ and your Rx- wires twisted together inside the length of the cable, and you tried to send a signal, you would actually be able to hear yourself speek.

Don't listen to someone when they say "the order doesn't matter", unless they explain why it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter as long as your First & Second, and Third & Sixth are the same colour (on both ends), and either the first or second is striped (on both ends). I can't recall, but i believe your 1st and 2nd are transmit, and 3rd and 6th are recieve. No one really remembers that stuff anyway tho. If you want your cable to work on gigabit ethernet, make sure the 4th & 5th cables are the same colour, and the 7th & 8th are the same colour.

If you want to have a crossover cable, swap the 1st & 2nd with the 3rd & 6th on ONE end, so the Tx on one side goes to the Rx on the other, and vice versa.

Orange
Orange Stripe
Green
Blue Stripe
Blue
Green Stripe
Brown
Brown Stripe

also make sure your cat5 insulation goes about half a centimeter into your heads, so the plastic tab anchors onto it. :)

[mbigna]

Hmmm. You are going to have a hard time determining who is right and wrong on this one. The correct answer is "yes AND no."

If you take a close look at your cat5 cable, you will find 8 wires total, but really they are 4 PAIRS. Orange and Orange/White, Blue and Blue/White, Brown and Brown/White, and Green and Green/White. Each color pair is twisted together and then the four PAIRS are all twisted together. It won't make a difference in signal crosstalk as long as the PAIRS are kept together, but it will if you split out the pairs. I'll try to show an example, and you can decide who is right (if you can even understand the example):

O = Orange
G = Green
W = White

Connector ---------- Wire ---------- Connector

Obviously, this one works

O --- O --- O
OW --- OW --- OW
G --- G --- G
GW --- GW --- GW

This also works:

O --- G --- O
OW --- GW --- OW
G --- O --- G
GW --- OW --- GW

This combo WILL NOT work (at least not for any long distance w/o errors):

O --- O --- O
OW --- GW --- OW
G --- G --- G
GW --- OW --- GW

I hope that this helps...

Damn--Phillip---- you just beat my post (heh--I'm glad we gave similar answers)

[Jon]

I see what you're all saying...I guess what I was stating was that changing order of the wires will allow it to work as long as the order is still the same in the end.

As far as keeping the pairs themselves intact, yes, I absolutely agree this is necessary for optimal performance for reasons stated.

In short, will rearranging the order of the wires matter if they are the same on the same end work? Yes.

Is this recommended? No.

[Über~PhLuBB]

The whole issue arose because I made a cable for him, but it doesn't work, whereas his others do work for him. However, before I tested it, I used it in my network (to test it) and it worked.

I don't remember exacly the colors and order I used, but I do know that I made the 1,2,3, and 6 wires the same on both ends (I believe I used the green and orange wires too, but probably not the correct color for Tx/Rx), as I remembered those are the only ones used.

Zigma, can you confirm? Maybe you wrapped your cable around a speaker 10 or 20 times? lol

It's a 50 foot cable by the way.

[jajmon]

Colors don't matter, what does mater is that you 'pinched' the cable to specs as far as pin1,2 etc in respect to tx/rx. That said, you can use green and green/white for tx, and orange and orange/wh for recieve, just make the 'pins' you put the colors to adhere to standard for tx/rx.

[Zigma]

Originally posted by Über~PhLuBB
The whole issue arose because I made a cable for him, but it doesn't work, whereas his others do work for him. However, before I tested it, I used it in my network (to test it) and it worked.

I don't remember exacly the colors and order I used, but I do know that I made the 1,2,3, and 6 wires the same on both ends (I believe I used the green and orange wires too, but probably not the correct color for Tx/Rx), as I remembered those are the only ones used.

Zigma, can you confirm? Maybe you wrapped your cable around a speaker 10 or 20 times? lol

It's a 50 foot cable by the way.

lol at the speaker part. umm i need to go to my sisters room to confirm it because at my end i shopped the rj45 off to "fix" the cable so we are pretty much as a TIE.

[jajmon]

ok you two, I feel a :argue: coming on and money aside, 'colors' do NOT matter. If one wants to make a cable that doesn't use the color standard, so be it. As long as the proper pins line up properly (green/yellow/purple/black etc) to standard for tx/rx, then it should work.

[Über~PhLuBB]

There's no argument. I didn't make him pay me, I just gained two 24/7 F@H rigs instead. ;)

[Goldwing]

Just a thought, did Zigma need a crossover cable (connecting just 2 computers without a hub/switch/router)? Or perhaps hook one the cable ends into the "uplink" port of his switch/hub/router?

:burn:

[Zigma]

Originally posted by jajmon
ok you two, I feel a :argue: coming on and money aside, 'colors' do NOT matter. If one wants to make a cable that doesn't use the color standard, so be it. As long as the proper pins line up properly (green/yellow/purple/black etc) to standard for tx/rx, then it should work.

me and PhLuBB go way back. i don't think a 60 bux will make us go :argue: :mad: o and i was using it for a hub. the cable synced to the hub but no network traffic was going in or out.

[Kingslayer]

Actually I will have to call a draw on this.

Yes, you can wire them up any way you please as long as you do it the same on both ends. But without following the standards of wiring CAT-5 you will not get the designed distance, nor the interference protection.

If you follow the wiring guidelines, then you will rexieve the distance that you should get. (100 meters), and you will also seriously cut down interference. That is the whole point of the standard. To keep the twinsted pairs together, the twists is what stops the interference.

If your running a 30 foot drop at home, then color probably won’t matter.

Howerver, if your running a drop out 250 feet to a device that needs clean data like a printer, then color order matters.

phillip put up the cisco color sequence, which in my book should be erased from all cisco manuals because it is 100% wrong. I have argued, and proven, argued and proven with cisco instructors that it is backwards.

The color sequence is

568A

White green
Green
White orange
Blue
White blue
orange
White brown
brown

And the more popular and recommended 568B

White orange
Orange
White green
Blue
White Blue
Green
White Brown
Brown

Wire both ends 568B for normal cables and wire one end 568B and the other end 568A for crossover.

Good resources:

http://wwhttp://www.ramelectronics.net/html/information-cat5.htmw.atcomservices.com/highlights/makepatch.htm
http://www.cabletron.com/support/techtips/tk0231-9.html#Wiring%20Color%20Code%20Standards:
http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/cat5_cables_.htm
http://www.10gea.org/Tech-whitepapers.htm

[Diggrr]

So it was Cisco that did that to us...kept wondering where that dyslexia came from.
If you check with the wiring patern inside a jack (most are color coded) then you'll see of course that Kingslayer is quite right.

We're number one in the world, we're not wrong...everyone else is."

[Kingslayer]

Any good Cisco instructor (ie, one that teaches you to learn and doesn’t teach you to pass the course) will tell you the same about Cisco.

They only thing consistant is their inconsistency.

Yes, even Cisco Certifications are becoming horribly over-rated….

[Kingslayer]

You know I have sunk more thought into this.

I'm sorry but I would have to name Zigma the winner of this bet.

There are clear cut ISO Industry Standards on the wiring. And so as just plugging them in any ole way doesn't not meet the standard for distance or crosstalk stoppage Zigma is the clear winner.

Yes, I know that it works plugged in any ole way. But like I have stated and linked to there are STANDARDS. And as a senior member here I am committed to the "right way" of doing things, and you cant argue with an ISO standard.

[Breadfan]

Originally posted by Kingslayer
And the more popular and recommended 568B

White orange
Orange
White green
Blue
White Blue
Green
White Brown
Brown


I have to agree...for optimum performance, you gotta split that one pair (usually the green/green white pair)

Now...with very high quality cable, interference free routing, and shorter distances, you might be ok.

I didn't believe this, but thruths from experience...I had a cable that didn't work. I reclipped it three times. Finally tried the supposed "correct" way of splitting the green pair like that, and voila....it worked like a charm.

I was going off of basic electric theory...i.e. make a connection in the right place on either side and you've got your circuit...

However, with the high speeds of the cables, they're very sensitive to interference.

So the cable has only a chance of working right if not wired that way.

And that all depends on cable quality, insulation quality, routing, and the NICs/hubs used.

As for the winner of the bet, thats a tough call, becuase theoretically doing it Phlubb's way CAN work...

Mike

[Zigma]

so i guess we a tied then.

[su root]

Originally posted by Kingslayer
And the more popular and recommended 568B

White orange
Orange
White green
Blue
White Blue
Green
White Brown
Brown


Where do you get "more popular" and "recommended" from?
In my limited cable-making experience, I was taught using 568A, splitting the orange pair..

I know there is no difference between wiring it 568A and 568B, as long as you wire it the same (or different, as needed) on the other end, but why do you call it the recommended form?

[Crash893]

Originally posted by Über~PhLuBB

It's a 50 foot cable by the way.

i used to work in a data senter

we had some compac servers that wouldnt work with a 50 footer

would work with 45 or 55 but something about 50 feet it wouldnt come up

[Kingslayer]

Originally posted by su root


Where do you get "more popular" and "recommended" from?
In my limited cable-making experience, I was taught using 568A, splitting the orange pair..

I know there is no difference between wiring it 568A and 568B, as long as you wire it the same (or different, as needed) on the other end, but why do you call it the recommended form?

Because out of the probably 20+ miles of cable that I have played with, inspected, and hooked things into in the last 5 years, 99 times out of 100 it's wired 568B. Most companies make their patch cable 568B. 99 out of 100 jacks for your home are designed to be wired 568B as are 99 out of 100 patch panels.