Network Cable (Cat5e) Cable Colours

decmatt

decmatt

decmatt

Soldato
Joined
10 May 2004
Posts
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Location
East Yorkshire, UK
Hi all

I am trying to install network cable into a faceplate, and I am having trouble with the colours of the wires. In all network cable I have used before it has been straight forward with the solid and stripe colours of wires, however this cable doesn't have them. It has the following colours: Light Blue, Dark Blue, Orange, Light Green, Dark Green, White, Light Grey and Dark Grey.

I can't find a colour map that uses these colours to identify the numbers. The make of the cable is PlusCom.

Any ideas?

Cheers
 
I assume you know this since you're messing with faceplates etc but just in case...colours don't matter, it's where the wires terminate at each end of the cable that does, assuming they're coloured the same all the way through. So if the other end is the same it's a straight-through, if light blue, dark blue and orange and white are swapped, x-over.
 
The colours don't matter, but the pairs do.

Pair 1 = pins 1 & 2
Pair 2 = pins 3 & 6
Pair 3 = pins 4 & 5
Pair 4 = pins 7 & 8

Chances are the grey is a shade of brown that looks odd due to the lighting conditions.

If you treat the dark colours as the ‘solid’ colours, and the light colours as the 'striped' colours you’ll probably be correct. You can easily check that you’ve got them paired correctly because they’ll be twisted together.
 
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Are you sure it's cat5e cable? I remember a thread like this a while back about someone who was planning to install some cable and found that the cable had non-standard colours for cat5e, and not only that but it wasn't twisted pair (so in fact it was just an 8 conductor cable, and not suitable for networking).
 
I definitely bought it as Cat5E cable (it says on the box), it says

150 Meter 4 Pair RJ45 RJ45 Ethernet Standard Bulk Cable - Pluscom N150MK

This is my first time doing this, the plan is to create a network between the router and sky box, would I be using a straight line or x-over?
 
Always use straight through. Crossover is only for switch to switch, and pc to pc (no router) and even then, most switches (and all gigabit) are auto sense now.
 
I have done this

1. White 5. Blue
2. Orange 6. Light Blue
3. Green 7. Grey
4. Light Green 8. Light Grey

The router acknowledges a connection (flashes light), but doesn't assign it an IP, I have done this at both faceplates.
 
So it sounds like you’ve done:-

Pair 1 = pins 1 & 2
Pair 2 = pins 3 & 4
Pair 3 = pins 5 & 6
Pair 4 = pins 7 & 8

If so it won’t work.

Try:-

  1. Light green
  2. Dark green
  3. White
  4. Dark blue
  5. Light blue
  6. Orange
  7. Light grey
  8. Dark grey

That part number seems to link to stranded cable which wouldn't really be suitable for punchdown faceplates. Is it stranded?

Edit:

Pluscom wouldn't be my first choice of cable. It's suspiciously cheap even for copper clad, and they’re guilty of selling things such as cat6e cable. Hopefully I’m misjudging the situation and there’s another company with the same name manufacturing decent cable.
 
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Found what I did wrong, and see why the company gave me a free Cable Tester :p

Pin 1 wasn't wired in correctly, re-punched and it is working perfectly :)

Thanks guys for your help!
 
Would it cause any performance issues, it is about 10m in total? I don't mind re-punching if I would see an improvement.
 
Difficult to say. I have on occasion found similar wiring errors on customer sites that have gone undiscovered for years without causing any noticeable problems.

The pairs are twisted together to help avoid problems with interference and crosstalk so it’s best to do correctly from day one. Connecting straight across as you have done means that pins 3, 4, 5 and 6 aren’t connected correctly.
 
How on earth are they selling 150m of cable for around 10 quid?

Edit: I see. It's aluminium, and really really thin.
 
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