Connecting An Ethernet Cable; Overview - HP FlexNetwork HSR6800 Installation Manual

Connecting an Ethernet cable

Overview

10/100 Mbps Ethernet uses category-5 twisted pair cables, while 1000 Mbps Ethernet uses
category-5 enhanced or category-6 twisted pair cables. Twisted pair cables include straight-through
cables and crossover cables.
Category-5 cables provide a transmission frequency of 100 MHz for voice and data transmission and
they are typically used in 100Base-T and 10Base-T networks. Category-5 cables are common
Ethernet cables, which can also be used to transmit 1000 Mbps Ethernet data.
Category-5 enhanced cables feature low attenuation and crosstalk, providing higher attenuation to
crosstalk ratio (ACR), less delay error and higher performance than category-5 cables. Category-5
enhanced cables are typically used in 1000 Mbps Ethernet networks.
Category-6 cables provide a transmission frequency of 1 MHz to 250 MHz, and improve the
performance on crosstalk and return loss. Category-6 cables have sufficient power sum ACR
(PS-ACR) when working at 200 MHz. They provide a bandwidth two times than that of category-5
enhanced cables, thus featuring higher transmission performance. Therefore, category-6 cables are
suitable for applications requiring a transmission speed of more than 1 Gbps.
The 10/100 Mbps Ethernet uses the following two wire pairs of a twisted-pair cable to transmit and
receive data:
•
Orange/white strip and orange pair
•
Green/white strip and green pair.
The 1000 Mbps Ethernet uses all the four wire pairs of a twisted-pair cable to transmit and receive
data.
An Ethernet twisted pair cable connects network devices through the RJ-45 connectors at the two
ends. Figure 28
Figure 28 RJ-45 connector pins
PIN #8
PIN #1
EIA/TIA defines pin-to-wire assignments standards, T568A and T568B, as shown in
and Table 8.
Table 7 T568A pinouts
Pin No.
1
2
3
4
5
shows the pins of an RJ-45 connector.
Wire color
White/Green strip
Green solid
White/Orange strip
Blue solid
White/Blue strip
24
Table 7