Module 1.1: Ethernet cables
- If you want to learn about driving, you first have to understand what a road is.
- In this case, network "roads" are cables, but can also be fiber optics or wireless networks
- We need to understand how to create one of these "roads" from scratch
- We will be using either category 5 "cat5" or category 6 "cat6" cables
- cat5 has a max speed of 1 gb/s, especially if it is labeled cat5e, or cat5 extended
- cat6 has a max speed of 10 gb/s
- The cable ends for these are not interchangeable, as one wire is a bit thinner than the other (cat5 is 24AWG while cat6 is 23AWG, a bit thicker)
- The ends are called RJ45 and has 8 slots
- When viewed with the flat side towards you, these are the colors:
Download O O G BI BI G Br Br.tiff (image/tiff, 429.6 KB)
- This is NOT random
- The first two orange pairs (1 and 2) are for data transmit
- The green pairs (3 and 6) are for data receive
- The blue pair is for power over ethernet (POE) plus (+)
- The brown pair is for POE negative (-)
- This color is different from 8 conductor (4 pair) telephone cables which may look exactly alike
- Reason? Phone cables start with 4-5 as line one, then 3-6 as line two, 2-7 as line three and 1-8 as line four
- Each of these has up to 90 volts on each pair (when a telephone rings) so we separate our color code for computers
- Reason? Plugging a computer into a phone outlet will not burn out the network card on the computer this way
Migrated from Apple Server Wiki. Original page ID: V6c8B7u