Patch Cable Colors...

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Deleted member 12930

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Hello,

I am in the process of rebuilding my families home network. We have 25 drops run through out the house into a networking closet. Previously I had just real quickly plugged in cables to only the drops that had a computer. Well that's changing and I'm purchasing two 16 port switch's. I've seen professional setups in the networking gallery where racks have a few odd colored patch cables.

What do all the colors mean? Is there a standard for what color to use in each case? Or is it just whatever the user wants?

Thanks!
 
It's just a personal thing, to help identify different cables/groups/etc.
 
Yeah. You could probably find a list of "standards" out there, like blue for workstations, gray for IP phones etc, but that's just someone else's personal preference. Setup your own coloring scheme! :D
 
Right...some people like to use different colors to identify which ports are printers or APs, etc...
 
Awesome! that's what I thought, but wasn't sure. Thanks for the QUICK responce!
 
Red for PCs...its like cars, red cables make the bits go faster.
 
Red is a standard color for fire systems. We could not use red cables at the last place I worked because the fire suppression system was required (by law) to use red cabling. But, everything else was just fine.
 
we use blue for computers, and white for telephones. keeps it easy to distinguish the differences between the two groups.
 
hmm.. most places I've seen have used the blue cable.. I thought it was because it used to be that blue = plenium (sp?) coated or whatever.. made to be inside walls and such.. and the white stuff was wasn't..
 
Personally I've always left red for cross over cables. Anything else is fine, but red = cross over.

 
Danith said:
hmm.. most places I've seen have used the blue cable.. I thought it was because it used to be that blue = plenium (sp?) coated or whatever.. made to be inside walls and such.. and the white stuff was wasn't..
Click to expand...

Blue and white are the two most common colors for plenum. Years ago when I had to string a lot of wire where I worked, I used white for data since thats what was already in use, and blue for phones. The good old Belden DataTwist plenum only comes in those two colors.
 
Party2go9820 said:
Personally I've always left red for cross over cables. Anything else is fine, but red = cross over.

Click to expand...


red = crossover here as well.

We have so many we actualy sorta ran out of standard colors and have some bright pink for the test server farm.

For home I went colors per floor

Blue for basement
Green for ground
Yellow for second floor (uplink to switch in upstairs closet.)
 
As stated above...general preference.
Red is commonly used more just for crossover though..that's quite universal.

As for the rest...I try to separate them..as long as you know what they mean. I try to use one color for the uplink cables..that uplink switches. I'll have a separate color from the router to the main switch..usually green. I'll have separate colors for the patch cables going to the servers also. And the bulk of the population going to all the workstations..the common color..often white or yellow or blue.
 
In my CO we use:

Red=Crossover
Green=T1/Special Circuits
Blue=Straight Through(lots of Blue)
Orange=Long-Haul Fiber
Yellow=Patch Panel Fiber, the ends on these cables are different depending on cut of the connector (angled vs straight)
White=Phone
Pink=Alarm (we wanted red but had crossover cables already in place and the Pink was 75% off through our distributor because nobody buys Pink cat5e and they were clearing it out)
 
In my environment we only have Cat5 cables, so instead of color coding based on use, i color code based on length.

Beige cables are 3 feet, gray cables are 7 feet, blue cables are 14 feet, yellow cables are 25 feet.

Infrastructure wiring (closet to ports) is green.

Crossover cables are red.
 
Red = Crossover
Green = Printers
Blue = Workstation
Black = Server
Yellow = Backbone or Pass-Thru
White = VOIP or Phone

First day at work, and all the blue crossovers went into the trash. Get one of those mixed in with your regular cables and it can ruin your whole day.

If you pick blue, gray or black for the workstations forming the bulk of the harnesses, then the colored ones will stand out that much easier. Blue is easier on the eyes then black (and gray looks grungy - I eventually threw the gray ones into the trash as well).
 
Pardon my naieve question, but why does color matter? Don't you label both ends of your cables?
 
We do label all of our cables but it's nice to have matching cable colors. It looks better and makes life easier when trying to verify what type of cable the CO guys hooked up(we send them a diagram and they hook up cables based on the design, cable colors make their life easy). We do the same thing at customer sites, blue for computer and white for phone, makes troubleshooting easy, never fails a customer plugs their white IP phone cable into the blue keystone jack(for internet).

mikeblas said:
Pardon my naieve question, but why does color matter? Don't you label both ends of your cables?
Click to expand...
 
mikeblas said:
Pardon my naieve question, but why does color matter? Don't you label both ends of your cables?
Click to expand...

Much easier and quicker to eyeball colors...versus hunt and follow the tips of your fingers looking for that label in which you have to grab the cable and twist it so the text is facing you in order to read it. Also labels can fall off. And labels may need replacing if you want to use that specific cable for something else.
 
Party2go9820 said:
Sorry, but I think you failed reading comprehension. That is a very nice guide for making cables and making sure you get the right pairs matched up, but this thread is about the color of the outside of a cable.

Click to expand...
Sorry, but I think you failed plays well with others. A forum is a place to help people out, not put 'em down when they make a mistake.
 
Nice.

Our offices:

Blue = workstations on internal network
Green = telco/networking equipment
Grey = workstations on guest network
White = printers/scanners
Turquoise = same as green, except crossovers
Red is associated with servers right now. Lotsa red going to our 904 servers in the datacenter

We'll be using yellow for the upcoming Avaya VoIP system I believe. I wasn't around when that was discussed a few months ago.
 
Where I'm at...in a datacenter...

white = data...Cat6
Yellow = SOSCON / Token Ring (not many left)
Red = Crossover
 
Factory where we build Cisco routers. (Catalyst 6500, 12000 Series Routers, CRS-1)

Blue= company LAN
Yellow= Cisco's network
Grey= local test network (for UUTs)
Orange= Mulitmode fiber
Yellow= Singlemode fiber
Red= Crossover
White= Phone

Only the Blue,Yellow and White are the only ones strictly enforced, and even then only for LAN drops. Patch cord is treated loosly depending what was avaliable at the time, and comes in just about every color in the rainbow, thou we try to use the same colors in the same areas for the same things so it doesn't look too wild. Cable management can get kinda crazy with some of the test setups thou thankfully most of the lenghs are under 10ft, so you can just trace it back, and all of it is labeled.

We also use UTP cable for RS232 signals sometimes, so you have rollovers for that as well as crossovers for 802.3 eithernet.
 
Fark_Maniac said:
Where I'm at...in a datacenter...

white = data...Cat6
Yellow = SOSCON / Token Ring (not many left)
Red = Crossover
Click to expand...

Wow..I haven't worked on Token Ring since the Windows 95b days..even then it was rare..some of American Expresses franchise offices.
 
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