Mixing cat5e and cat6 sockets? X-post

[David.WE.Roberts]

Right, I have a new cat5e patch panel.

In my bits of temporarily wired cabling through the walls I have a mix of cat5e and cat6 sockets in the wall boxes.

At the moment they are either cat5e sockets at both ends or cat6 at both ends. The cat6 are because Screwfix only seem to stock these, and I've come to the end of my stock of cat5e wall sockets.

I am aware that you can get away with wiring up plugs and sockets in a non- standard way as long as both ends of the cable has the same wires to the same pins.

Now I am about to organise all the wires into a single cat5e patch panel and checking that all this should work.

Am I correct in assuming that the EIA-T568B wire colour codes are the same for cat5e and cat6?

1 white/orange

2 Orange

3 white/green

4 Blue

5 white/blue

6 Green

7 white/brown

8 Brown

I note from the back of the sockets that some of the wire number locations have switched round but if I match number to number is there any reason why it shouldn't work?

Cheers

Dave R

[mick]

Wiring colours and sequence are identical for both. The differences between cat5e and cat6 as far as plugs and sockets go are the label and the price tag. :)

Cat6 is actually certified to handle gigabit Ethernet, cat5e only "works with" gigabit Ethernet in almost all applications.

[David.WE.Roberts]

Supplemental - I seem to have a pair of sockets which are neither cat5e nor cat6.

What I think should be, looking at the back of the socket with the plug at the top, reading the numbers for the individual punch down slots:

Cat5e

2 8 1 7 6 4 3 5

Cat6 [made by LAP]

2 8 1 7 4 6 5 3

i.e the bottom two pairs have switched sides.

I have found that I have a pair of sockets which do not conform to either of these, but are

2 7 1 8 5 6 4 3

i.e. like the cat6 [LAP] socket but with the 8/7 (brown) and the 5/4 (blue) twisted pairs inverted

I am having a great deal of difficulty finding a definitive picture of the back of a standard cat6 socket, for instance from Screwfix

the picture seems to be the same as a cat5e socket.

Am I in fact assuming too much, and expecting all the sockets to be wired in the same order, when in fact they can be in any order?

Cheers

Dave R

[David.WE.Roberts]

Cure you, Pan, for your line merging!

Cat5e

2 8

1 7

6 4

3 5 Cat6 [made by LAP]

2 8

1 7

4 6

5 3

i.e the bottom two pairs have switched sides.

I have found that I have a pair of sockets which do not conform to either of these, but are

2 7

1 8

5 6

4 3

i.e. like the cat6 [LAP] socket but with the 8/7 (brown) and the 5/4 (blue) twisted pairs inverted

[The Nomad]

Dave,

I always understood it was the T568A/B that mattered not the Cat5/5e/6

Avpx

[Andrew]

I believe CAT5e only needs two pairs, so you can use a single cable run to carry two separate signals, provided you make up your own patch cords at each end. 568A is intended for ISDN/telephony and 568B is for computer applications. But since all cables are 'straight through' it makes no practical difference.

CAT6 needs all 8 cables (afaik). The colour codes inside the punchdown connector are the same.

All cables are 'straight through', pin 2 goes to pin 2, pin 3 to pin 3. Back in the days of rs232c, pins 2 and 3 were crossed over within the cable. With CAT5E the 'crossover' is inside the router or switch. If you want to connect two computers back to back with one ethernet cable and no switch or router, then the cable must be a crossover cable, or have a crossover adapter at one end of a normal cable.

The bending radius is CAT6 is so onerous that fitting out a domestic house with ordinary back boxes is almost impossible, as compared to a suspended computer floor with loads of space.

[David.WE.Roberts]

Thanks to all respondents.

The colour codes are all the same.

However it seems that the order in the punch blocks is different in different sockets.

I thought this was mandated in cat5e and cat6 especially as all pictures of cat5e punch down connectors in the back of the wall sockets look the same.

Given that I only have one sample marked cat5e, one marked cat6, and one not marked as either I am trying to work out if the punch down blocks are different for each manufacturer.

I got myself horribly confused making up a punch down chart for one cat6 socket then using it on one from a different manufacturer where the order was different.

Anyway, lesson learned, chart each socket before using and don't assume all sockets are the same layout.

Cheers

Dave R

[Henry Law]

Not to mention the ingenious way that some manufacturers colour-code the back of their sockets in such a way as to confuse completely someone who thought he knew the right order ...

[Capitol]

A cheap network cable tester is your friend. Saves a lot of time finding the wrong/not connected connections. Around £5 from Amazon IIRC.

[polygonum]

All the sockets I deal with have two sets of colours - marked A and B. We always use B. There are only, I think, two changes between them!

[David.WE.Roberts]

I've got a Konig CMP-RCT31 which is why I knew I had wiring problems.

Looks like this

Worth every penny of whatever I paid for it.

Cheers

Dave R

[John Rumm]

You can use non standard wiring, so long as you ensure that you still use pairs of wires appropriately. Otherwise you can find you have connections that have all the right pins wired together but simply don't work at ethernet speeds.

Yes, and the B spec seems to be far more commonly used these days.

The plugs will always have wires in the specified order. On sockets they may be organised in various orders depending on how the PCB connects the socket pins to the punch down terminal.

[John Rumm]

That is not quite true - CAT5e is fully specced for gigabit as well.

CAT6 - is specced for above gigabit speeds, and when used at gig speeds will give better SNR margin.

[John Rumm]

That's because there is no standard. The pins of the sockets itself are in a fixed place, but how those are wired to the terminal blocks is down to the manufacturers preference

If they are colour coded, go by that, if not follow the numbers. If unsure, wire one up and then buzz it out - checking the pairs as you go

basically yes.

[John Rumm]

With the gigabit (1000BASE-T) spec auto NDX is also specified, so the need for crossover cables is negated.

Yup, handling difficulty (and partly cost) are the main reasons for lack of uptake of cat6 in domestic situations.

[Graham.]

As you imply, electricity is colour blind so in practice it wouldn't matter if you did use the wrong colours as long as the pin number matched up at each end

And And And (very important!)

1&2 3&6 4&5 7&8 each use a complimentary coloured pair (colour & same colour with white stripe. Someone mentioned a cheap cable tester, but it's important to realise that if you split the pairs the cable tester will still say it's all correct but it won't work at Gigabit speed and might not work at 10/100Mb/s either depending on which pairs are split.

[Graham.]

If I could correct you somewhat. Both CAT5 and CAT6 require all 4 pairs if you require Gigabit speeds.

If you only need 100Mb/s then both types of cable only need two pairs.

[Capitol]

No, if you split the pairs, the cable tester will pick this up IME. To get Gb speed you need all the wires connected or if you have split the cable to get 2 cat5 outlets you need a combiner at the ends of the cable to use a single GB outlet. IME Gb working is only useful in a home network if you are streaming video or transferring very large files. A mixed network can be very versatile and reduces cable runs greatly for multi outlet installations.

[John Rumm]

The better ones might, but many of the cheap ones don't (they just look for the right end to end connections).

I think anyone lumping about DVD rips or quantities of music will soon realise benefit from gigabit at home.

[Johny B Good]

Showing the contact stations in a straight numeric sequence as per the above is the only sane way to unravel the horrible distribution of the 4 pairs involved.

The most important feature to note is the odd way the green pair (orange pair in the 568A schematic) is split across the blue pair (both A and B cases) which resides on contacts 4 and 5 thus causing the the green (orange) pair to occupy contacts 3 and 6 whilst the other 2 pairs occuppy contacts 1 and 2 and contacts 7 and 8.

As long as you stick with one or the other colour code for each end of a socket to socket run and take note of the pair splitting across contacts 3 and 6, you should be good to go.

If you assume each pair is simply connected to all the contacts in sequence 1,2 3,4 5,6 7,8 you'll screw it up as far as ethernet signalling goes even though a simple cable tester will show the 'correct' continuity.

I'm pretty certain that the contact numbering is the only consistent part of the spec so as long as you've worked out which colours to use at each end against the contact station numbering, it should work just fine.

Yes, according to my printed out web pages from the duxcw.com website back in June 2004, the blue and brown pairs are on the same contacts with the orange and green pairs swapped round between contacts 1,2 and contacts 3,6.

It's not very often that I feel impelled to print web pages but, in this case, I made an exception. As they say, it's a can of worms standard for which you need a very very clear head to decipher.

I can only guess at the oddball use of contacts 3 and 6 as being due to a 'legacy issue'. Thank goodness that crossover circuits are a dim and distant memory due to the ubiquitous Auto MDI/MDX feature of every ethernet adapter since the turn of the century!