Making Straight-Thru and Crossover Cables

Twisted pair wire actually contains 4 pairs of wire but only two of the pairs are used. The standards designate those pairs as the Green pair and the Orange pair. The Blue and Brown pairs are not used but are still crimped into the RJ45 connector. There are 2 standards for the order in which the wires go into the connector. 568A and 568B are actually opposites of each other. Notice that the Brown and Blue pairs dont change positiononly the Orange and Green pairs do.

368A Cable End

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. White-Green Green White-Orange Blue White-Blue Orange Blue-Orange White-Brown

368 B Cable End

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. White-Orange Orange White-Green Blue White-Blue Green White-Brown Brown

A straight-thru cable has both ends made with the same standard and is used to go from a computer to a switch or a switch to a hub. A crossover cable has opposite standards on opposite ends and is used to go from a computer directly to another computer or controller without using a hub. A hub or switch actually reverses the polarity for you. To determine which wire is wire number 1, hold the RJ-45 connector with the open end to you and the clip facing down so that the copper side is facing up. When looking down at the copper side, wire 1 will be on the far left.

Making a Cable
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Strip about 1 inch off the end of the wire. Make sure there are no nicks in the coatings on the wires. Cut the nylon string off completely. Untwist the pairs and straighten the wires. Place them in the order for the 568B standard with wire one to the left and no space between the wires. Cut the wire off so that you have about of exposed wire. Holding the connector with the clip down, slide the wires into the back of the connector so that each wire goes into its own compartment. Push the wires all the way in and make sure the outer coating is half way into the connector, or as far as it can go. This will make a much more reliable cable because only a small portion of wire is untwisted, and the outer coating is crimped into the connector, thus making it stable. Check the order of the wires again before wasting a connector. The wire to the left should have a white background and they should alternate from there between striped and solid. Crimp the connector. Tug firmly on the connector to see if it is crimped properly. If you are making a straight-thru cable, make the other end the same way. If you are making a crossover cable, use the other standard (568A). Test the cable.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

More on Color-Code Standards

Well start with simple pin-out diagrams of the two types of UTP Ethernet cables. Here are the diagrams:

Youll note that the TX (transmitter) pins are connected to corresponding RX (receiver) pins, plus to plus and minus to minus. You must also use a crossover cable to connect units with identical interfaces. If you use a straight-through cable, one of the two units must, in effect, perform the crossover function. Two wire color-code standards apply: EIA/TIA 568A and EIA/TIA 568B. The codes are commonly depicted with RJ-45 jacks as follows (the view is from the front of the jacks):

If we apply the 568A color code and show all eight wires, our pin-out looks like this:

Note that pins 4, 5, 7, and 8 and the blue and brown pairs are not used in either standard. Quite contrary to what you may read elsewhere, these pins and wires are not used or required to implement 100BASE-TX duplexing-they are just plain wasted. However, the actual cables are not physically that simple. In the diagrams, the orange pair of wires are not adjacent. The blue pair is upside-down. The right ends match RJ-45 jacks and the left ends do not. If, for example, we invert the left side of the 568A "straight"-thru cable to match a 568A jack--put one 180 twist in the entire cable from end-to-end--and twist together and rearrange the appropriate pairs, we get the following can-of-worms:

This further emphasizes, I hope, the importance of the word twist in making network cables that will work. You cannot use a flat-untwisted telephone cable for a network cable. Furthermore, you must use a pair of twisted wires to connect a set of transmitter pins to their corresponding receiver pins. You cannot use a wire from one pair and another wire from a different pair. Keeping the above principles in mind, we can simplify the diagram for a 568A straight-thru cable by untwisting the wires, except the 180 twist in the entire cable, and bending the ends upward. Likewise, if we exchange the green and orange pairs in the 568A diagram we will get a simplified diagram for a 568B straight-thru cable. If we cross the green and orange pairs in the 568A diagram we will arrive at a simplified diagram for a crossover cable. All three are shown below: