CAT 5 cabling

Dear Admin,
Do we really have to follow the coloring standard while cabling. Like u said orange white(no.1) orange (no.2) green white (no.3) green (no.6). in straight thru.. If i use single color cable like orange (no. 1) blue( no. 2) green (no. 3) and brown (no. 6)for our convenience coz sometimes in some wires we could not see orange/white or brown/white/s. what could happen if i use like this. Does it have effect in network performance. I m really confused and i m sure u gonna clear it. HOpe u got what i mean to ask u? See ya Chris.

i know this has been from way back but i'm gonna answer it anyway

actually the color standards are mere guidelines so that all would have a universal way of making lan cables. well the truth is, in reality, even if you do not follow the standard and created your own version of wiring a lan cable that would be just fine as long as you are consistent and able do it to all of your lan cables in you netwrok so as to avoid confusion and problems later when your troubleshooting. the cat5 utp cable was designed in such a way that problems such as crosstalks could be avoided because of the way that easch pair of wire is twisted against each other. this helps in cancelling out crosstalks among wires thus not compromising data transport and reliability among cables.

IMHO, it is best to stick to the standards.

Reviving the dead eh Jhun ? Hehe good one

Remember that there are four sepatate pairs in a CAT5 cable, with each pair twisted within itself then the pairs combined in a particular way. So if you just pick colours at random then you might well end up with a 'split pair'. This will look fine from a wire map viewpoint and might well work at 10Mb/s but will probably struggle at 100Mb/s and might well not pass the certification tests. If you follow the colour scheme you won't go far wrong

Let me just make a short note that we have a whole section under the Networking > Cabling menu on how to properly wire Cat 5 cables. There's also illustrations on the two standards 586A and B.

Cheers,

Why would you not want to follow the standards?

Standards are there for a reason. Anyone can break them (Microsoft does). The problem is that if you don't follow standards you and the next fellow that has to make a change or needs to find a problem now has to figure out what you have done. This can be a headache and lead to mistakes.

Also, if you were working on a cable than runs from one room to another and you had to add a connector, what colors are you going to pick. You would have to run to the other room to see what was done on the other end of the cable. Easy to make a mistake here.

If you are using Cat5 cable, all the colors are going to be there. If you are not - you are asking for trouble. Bad enough trying to troubleshoot a computer, NIC card, switch, and bad cable only to find out the cable is inferior to begin with.

Stick with the standards. You will thank yourself later.