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Overview

There are various cable and connector types used in networking, but at the time the most common combination you'll run into are cat6 (short for category six) cables and connectors. Other common cabling types are cat5, cat7 and optical fibre cables. In network cabling, the most important concepts are good electrical (or with fibre, optical) contact and the correct placement order of the contacts in the connectors.

Different types of network cables

Some common types of different networking cables are straight cables, crossover cables and rollover cables.

• Straight through cables or straight cables are the most common cable type found. In straight cables the order of the contacts are the same in both ends of the cable. Straight cables are used to connect devices with different kind of networking hardware into each other (for example, a computer<>switch connection would use a straight cable). You can terminate the connectors with either cabling standard you like, but make sure you use the same standards on both ends.

• Crossover cables are cables where the green and orange contacts switch places with each other between the cable ends. In other words, one end of the cable is terminated as standard A and the other one according to standard B. Crossover cables are used to connect devices with similar kinds of networking hardware to each other (for example, a switch<>switch connection would be made with a crossover cable).

• Rollover cables are cables where the contact order is mirrored between the cable ends. Rollover cables are usually used to connect to Cisco networking hardware.

• Remember, electricity does not care about the color of the wire!

Pictures of contact layouts

̈Top left : Layout standards A and B

Top right: Straight through cable

Bot left : Crossover cable

Bot right: Rollover cable

Miscellaneous