MicroLink IT College

Networking Lab handout

Cabling (Cabling Arrangement)

Straight-through
This part of our series will focus on the wiring of CAT5 cable because it is the most
common type of UTP cable in the world. It's flexible, easy to

install and very reliable when wired properly. We'll also cover wiring classic CAT1 phone
cables. It is very important that you know exactly how to wire UTP cables. Cabling is the
base of a solid network, and doing it correctly the first time will help you avoid hours of
frustration and troubleshooting. On the other hand, if you are dealing with a poorly
cabled network, this knowledge will help you to find the problem and fix it more
efficiently.

Wiring UTP cables

We are now going to look at how UTP cables are wired. There are two popular wiring
schemes that most people use today: the T-568A and T-568B. These differ only in which
color-coded pairs are connected -- pairs 2 and 3 are reversed. Both work equally well, as
long as you don't mix them. If you always use only one version, you're okay, but if you
mix A and B in a cable run, you will get crossed pairs.

UTP cables are terminated with standard connectors, jacks and punchdowns. The
jack/plug is often referred to as a "RJ-45," but that is really a telephone company
designation for the "modular eight-pin connector" terminated with the USOC pinout used
for telephones. The male connector on the end of a patch cord is called a "plug" and the
receptacle on the wall outlet is a "jack."

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Cabling (Cabling Arrangement)
As I've already mentioned, UTP has four twisted pairs of wires. The illustration shows
the pairs and the color codes they have. As you can see, the four pairs are labeled. Pairs 2
and 3 are used for normal 10/100 Mbps networks, while pairs 1 and 4 are reserved. In
Gigabit Ethernet, all four pairs are used.

The picture below shows the end of a CAT5 cable with an RJ-45 connector. These are
used by all cables to connect to a hub or to your computer's network card. The picture
below that shows a stripped CAT5 cable and identifies the four twisted pairs.

And don't think that UTP CAT5 cable only comes in one boring color -- those days are
over! You'll find a wide range of choices today, as you can see below.

T-568A and T-568B four-pair wiring

Ethernet is generally carried in eight conductor cables with eight-pin modular plugs and
jacks. The connector standard is called "RJ-45" and is just like a standard RJ-11 modular
telephone connector, except it is a bit wider to carry more pins.

Note: Keep in mind that the wiring schemes we are going to talk about are all for
straight-through cables only.

The eight-conductor data cable contains four pairs of wires. Each pair consists of a solid
colored wire and a white wire with a stripe of the same color. The pairs are twisted
together. To maintain reliability on Ethernet, you should not untwist them any more than
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Cabling (Cabling Arrangement)
necessary (about 1 cm). The pairs designated for 10 and 100 Mbps Ethernet are orange
and green. The other two pairs, brown and blue, can be used for a second Ethernet line or
for phone connections.

There are two wiring standards for these cables, called "T568A" (also called "EIA") and
"T568B" (also called "AT&T" and "258A"). They differ only in connection sequence --
that is, which color is on which pin, not in the definition of what electrical signal is on a
particular color.

T-568A is supposed to be the standard for new installations, while T-568B is an

acceptable alternative. However, most off-the-shelf data equipment and cables seem to be
wired to T568B. T568B is also the AT&T standard. In fact, I have seen very few people
using T568A to wire their network. It's important not to mix systems, as both you and
your equipment will become hopelessly confused.

Pin number designations for T568B

Note that the odd pin numbers (1, 3, 5 and 7) are always the white with a stripe of color.
The wires connect to RJ-45 eight-pin connectors as shown below:

Here we break out the color codes for T568B:

Pin 1: white/orange (pair 2) TxData +

Pin 2: orange (pair 2) TxData -
Pin 3: white/green (pair 3) RecvData+
Pin 4: blue (pair 1)
Pin 5: white/blue (pair 1)
Pin 6: green (pair 3) RecvData-
Pin 7: white/brown (pair 4)
Pin 8: brown (pair 4)

The wall jack may be wired in a different sequence, because the wires are often crossed
inside the jack. The jack should either come with a wiring diagram or at least designate
pin numbers. Note that the blue pair is on the center pins; this pair translates to the
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Cabling (Cabling Arrangement)
red/green pair for ordinary telephone lines which are also in the centre pair of an RJ-11
(green=white/blue, red=blue).

Pin number designations for T568A

The T568A specification reverses the orange and green connections so that pairs 1 and 2
are on the center 4 pins, which makes it more compatible with the telephone company
voice connections. (Note that in the RJ-11 plug at the top, pairs 1 and 2 are on the center
4 pins.) The illustrations show the order of colors in T568A.

Pin color codes for T568A in writing are as follows:

Pin 1: white/green (pair 3) RecvData+

Pin 2: green (pair 3) RecvData-
Pin 3: white/orange (pair 2) TxData +
Pin 4: blue (pair 1)
Pin 5: white/blue (pair 1)
Pin 6: orange (pair 2) TxData -
Pin 7: white/brown (pair 4)
Pin 8: brown (pair 4)

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The diagram below shows the 568A and 568B in comparison:

Where are they used?

The most common application for a straight-through cable is a connection between a PC

and a hub or switch. In this case, the PC is connected directly to the hub or switch, which
will automatically cross over the cable internally, using special circuits. In the case of a
CAT1 cable, which is usually found in telephone lines, only two wires are used. These do
not require any special cross over since the phones connect directly to the phone socket.

The picture above shows a standard CAT5 straight-through cable used to connect a PC to
a hub. You might expect the TX+ of one side to connect to the TX+ of the other side, but
this is not the case. When you connect a PC to a hub, the hub will automatically x-over

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Cabling (Cabling Arrangement)
the cable by using its internal circuits. The result is that pin 1 from the PC (which is TX+)
connects to pin 1 of the hub (which connects to RX+).This happens for the rest of the
pinouts as well.

If the hub didn't cross over the pinouts using its internal circuits (this happens when you
use the uplink port on the hub), then pin 1 from the PC (which is TX+) would connect to
pin 1 of the hub (which would be TX+ in this case). So, no matter what we do with the
hub port (uplink or normal), the signals assigned to the eight pins on the PC side of things
will always remain the same. The hub's pinouts, however, will change depending whether
the port is set to normal or uplink.

Crossover Cable
The crossover (or crossover) CAT5 UTP cable has to be one of the most used cables after
the classic straight-thru cable. The crossover cable allows us to connect two computers
without needing a hub or switch. If you recall, the hub does the crossover for you
internally, so you only need to use a straight thru cable from the PC to the hub. Since now
we don't have a hub, we need to manually do the crossover.

Why do we need a crossover?

When sending or receiving data between two devices (I.E. computers) one will be
sending while the other receives. All this is done via the network cable and if you look at
a network cable you will notice that it contains multiple cables. Some of these cables are
used to send data, while others are used to receive data and this is exactly what we take
into account when creating a crossover cable. We basically connect the TX (transmit) of
one end to the RX (receive) of the other! The diagram below shows this in the simplest
way possible:

CAT5 Crossover

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There is only one way to make a CAT5 crossover cable and it's pretty simple. Those who
read the "wiring UTP" section know a crossover cable is a 568A on one end and a 568B
on the other. If you haven't read the wiring section, don't worry because I'll be giving you
enough information to understand what we are talking about.

As mentioned previously, a crossover cable is as simple as connecting the TX from one

end to the RX of the other and vice versa.

Let's now have a look at the pinouts of a typical crossover CAT5 cable:

As you can see, only four pins are needed for a crossover cable. When you buy a
crossover cable, you might find that all eight pins are used, these cables aren't any
different from the above, it's just that there are cables running to the unused pins. This
won't make any difference in performance, but is just a habit some people follow.

Here are the pinouts for a crossover cable which has all eight pins connected:

Where else can I use a crossover?

Crossover cables are not just used to connect computers, but a variety of other devices.
Prime example are switches and hubs. If you have two hubs and you need to connect
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Cabling (Cabling Arrangement)
them, you would usually use the special uplink port which, when activated through a little
switch (in most cases), makes that particular port not cross the tx and rx, but leave them
as if they where straight through.

What happens though if you haven't got any uplink ports or they are already used? The
Crossover cable will allow you to connect them and solve your problem. The diagram
below shows a few examples to make it simpler:

As you can see in the above diagram, thanks to the uplink port, there is no need for a
crossover cable.

Let's now have a look at how to cope when we don't have an uplink to spare, in which
case we must make a crossover cable to connect the two hubs: