[nzlug] very OT

[Jamie Curtis]

Hi,

>>> Does anyone know where pink patch cables are sold?
>> Pink is usually cross-over. At least the pink ones we use are.
>
> The crossover ones are cat5e and purple. (no crossover cat6)
> There are also purple straight ones in cat5 and cat6.
> There are no pink ones.
> Perhaps an orange one might do?
> Or green for dragon??? ;)) *runs*

Purple is generally accepted to be a T568A-T568B cable, meaning you cross 
the Green and Orange pairs but the Blue and Brown pairs are still straight 
through (so you don't effect phone systems running over the same cable). 
I'm pretty sure there is no standard that regulates the colours used and I 
have seen straight through purple cables, but any I find get cut up and in 
the bin.

Pink however is a much rarer convention, but I've always seen it used for 
early GigE cross over applications. Some early GigE copper gear used all 4 
pairs of cables for communication (1000BASE-TX) and so if you wanted to 
cross them, you had to cross green and orange *and* blue and brown. This 
died pretty quickly and almost all copper GigE is now 1000BASE-T based and 
also generally does auto MDI/MDI-X so crossover cables are redundant 
anyway.

Jamie