ethernet wiring - colour coding & convention

[Turbonium]

Is there any convention when it comes to the colours used for your standard ethernet wiring? E.g. blue vs. yellow vs. green...

Kind of a silly question, but I'm just curious.

[Fardringle]

Are you referring to the color of the plastic casing around the wires, or the colors of the wires themselves? There are definite standards for the arrangement of the colored wires, but the external casing color is just a matter of preference.

[JackMDS]

Your choice.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ethe...w=1280&bih=552

[Turbonium]

Originally Posted by Fardringle

Are you referring to the color of the plastic casing around the wires, or the colors of the wires themselves? There are definite standards for the arrangement of the colored wires, but the external casing color is just a matter of preference.

I meant literally the cosmetic part (the plastic casing), not the actual wiring of the cables.

Thanks btw to both posters above, regardless.

[ScottMac]

In days past, Unshielded Twisted Pair flavors of Ethernet and early Fast Ethernet required cross-over cables to interconnect some devices. It was a common convention to make those cross-over cables from cable having a red sheath/jacket/coating/band for easy visual identification.

[splat_ed]

There's no real convention for the cosmetic parts these days - just ease of identification. Imagine a 16 or 32 (or more!) switch with all blue and *one* needs to be traced...

[kevnich2]

Yes but you also don't use 16-48 different color patch cables in a switch either. I use different colors to denote different purposes eg Uplinks to other switches, ISCSI, servers, etc. I also use different colors to denote different lengths as well. Important cables I also label, non labeled ones are mainly just going to access type devices and I could care less about those. I just label the jacks that it's plugged into and those get plugged into regular switches. Specialty type things get plugged into my higher rack backbone switches.

[Mixolydian]

Blue - Data
Gray/White - Voice.

Use a label maker to identify each cable.