[lug] Cat 5e cable color codes

[Matt Clauson]

Another piece of useless trivia:

There are two types of colors in cabling.  Your primary colors (blue,
orange, green, brown, slate) you'll see most often, in "single runs"
(those individual pieces of cat5) -- however, in larger installs, you'll
frequently encounter larger cables (25 pair is the most frequent one I
see) -- this means you have to have secondary colors.  In most small
installs the only secondary you see is the first one, white...
However, the order goes like this:  white, red, black, yellow, violet
(a former colleague gave me a great mnemonic:  Will Rogers Bought Yellow
Violets)...  So in larger installs, you might see something like this:

Blue/White: pair 1
...
Slate/White: pair 5
Blue/Red: pair 6
...
Slate/Red: pair 10
and so on.

Note that this order changes somewhat for fiber installs, where there
isn't a "circuit", per se.  But the order still remains, at least
somewhat.  (I think they tag pink and aqua on the end of the list, to
make a "bundle" of 12 fibers)

And, if that isn't confusing enough, for EVEN LARGER cables, each 25 pair
"bundle" is wrapped with a colored thread (remember that damned annoying
little white thread in the cat5?  Now you know what it's there for)
using, as memory serves, the same color scheme as the "secondary" colors.
(You old-hand cabole monkeys [poke poke, Nate] feel free to correct me
if I'm a little off base here)

One final item that hit my mind -- when I've been working in Telco areas.
I usually see two types of cross-connect wire.  Either white (or yellow)
and blue,  or white(yellow) and red.  White/Blue usually means a PSTN/
analog/voice line, while white/red usually means hi-cap/data/dedicated
circuit.  Usually the non-voice stuff is tagged with circuit IDs and
the like (either a bright orange or white tag).

Ok, is that enough info for you?

BTW -- in any modern plant I've seen, 568B *is* the going standard.
And yes, you can get Cat5 rated 25pair cable -- some of the Extreme
Networks gear even comes with options to plug in a centronics-headed
cable -- saves lots of stress on the ports on the switch if you're just
cross-connecting patch panels.  Heh.

--mec