Cross Over thingy for Cat 5E cables

[mikey76]

Anyone know where I can get an adapter to put on the end of a Cat 5E cable that will "turn it into a crossover cable"? Seems simple enough. Or one that couples two Cat 5 E cables with the necessary twist switch inside.

Mikey76

[Fingers]

I've never seen an adapter to change a standard patch cable into a cross-over. There are baseboard mounted wall outlets at Home Depot that you could manually rewire fairly easily to "cross-over" two standard patch cables, or you could just buy a cross-over cable instead.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do, but if you're trying to connect two routers or hubs, many of them have an "uplink" port, which does the same thing as using a cross-over cable, which is simply to reverse the TX and RX wires at one end.

[mikey76]

what i want to do is net two machines in separate rooms for testing purposes. It is a short term thing, don't want to buy a long crossover cable, but do have long reg cat5e cables.

I kinda think along the lines of your suggestion. Get two surface mount RJ45s, and connect them with a flip.

[eweruk]

kewl idea mikey76

[TOAD6147]

Direct cable connections are supposed to be limited to 5 meters. You should be able to find a cheap 4 port hub for about $20 or so. You're going to spend half that on any other route you take so why waste the money unless it's for something you can reuse?

[mikey76]

Toad.....sounds like an idea. Where I can be gettin' that kinda thing?

[Fingers]

Good point TOAD, you can probably buy a cheap hub and use your existing cables for roughly the same amount as buying a pair of outlets and a cross-over cable... I hadn't thought of that. Besides, once you get networked.. you know you're gonna want to add more puters


Cat5e Ethernet isn't the same as Direct Cable Connection. The theoretical limit on length is about 150ft as I recall.

[mikey76]

Well...yes, I will want to add more. heh heh.

Damn....I got a Linksys 4 port hub router brand new in a box here to use with my DSL modem. Duh...

[eweruk]

Then you are all set!

[mikey76]

Yeh. I take 6 kinds of medicine 4 times a day....all which have side effects of memory loss, dizziness, lightheadness, and other things that I can't remember. But think goodness I still have my driver's license!

mikey aka overmedicated

[vfrxsw]

I realize you don't need a crossover adapter now but just in case anyone else wants to know they do make them. Thought Cyberguys had them but can't find them on their site.

I only post this to show they are out there I know absolutely nothing about this company
http://www.twstore.com/c5xover.html

Jensen tool catalog is where i had seen it recently while looking for cat5 calbe tester.
http://www.jensentools.com/product/g...arent_id=12460

[Crummy]

There are couplers that you can buy that will change your cable into a x-over, I found some at Fry's. The hub idea is better seeing that the coupler cost me around 10-15 bucks.

[dunbar]

Originally posted by Fingers
I've never seen an adapter to change a standard patch cable into a cross-over. There are baseboard mounted wall outlets at Home Depot that you could manually rewire fairly easily to "cross-over" two standard patch cables, or you could just buy a cross-over cable instead.

I tried the Home Depot baseboard stuff to make exactly such a crossover; the Leviton brand baseboard sockets were labeled incorrectly, so the wiring came out wrong.

After that, I gave up because I had a 4 port hub available, time was already wasted, so I just fired up the hub and thus needed nothing more than the 2 patch cables.

The crossover box idea will work, just do not trust Levitons products to be correctly labeled.

[Fingers]

dunbar there are two standards for wiring RJ-45's (568-B & 568-A) I've installed some of the Leviton modular jacks as recently as 2 weeks ago, and I know that they're labeled both ways. If both ends are wired the same, the cable is "straight-thru", but if one end is "A" and the other is "B", then your Tx (transmit) and Rx (recieve) wires will be crossed over (which is exactly what a "Cross-over" cable does.

In this pic, (taken from the Leviton website), the colors on the bottom are for 568-B, and the top colors relate to 568-A

Here's another good site where the colors, and their relating numbers can be seen. Lanshack.com

[Tomteriffic]

It may be a MOOt point now, for mikey76, but.. I found a crossover cable adapter kit yesterday at Medelson's Liquidation Outlet, here in Dayton, OH. (Im not sure if they're available online, but I'll put up a like to the website ad you can phone order them).

It's basically a 6 inch crossover cable and a double-female RJ45 jack Plug the little crossover cable into one side of the jack, your regular CAT 5 into the other and you're good to go. I used one this morning to do a quick and drity peer-to-peer network on two machines, worked fine.

Mendelson's is here:

Medelson's Liquidation Outlet

Their item # is 240-7846 The price is $2.99

BTW, their ready-made CAT 5 E is good quality and about a third the price of the Big Box (Beast Buy, CompUSA, etc.) guys and significantly cheaper than most computer shops.

[lost-and-found]

excuse me for asking, what is the difference between 568 A and B?

[mikey76]

Cat 5 Terminations

Shows pics of the two different connections. Simply put, the TX and RX lines are reversed.

[Fingers]

Hi lost-and-found

The only difference is which color wires correspond to which pin numbers. The link I posted above shows an example.



The image above shows a cross-over cable, which means one end is wired for 568-B (left) and the other is wired 568-A (right)


<edit> Hey, that's a nice link there Mikey... it's a bookmark now

[lost-and-found]

ah, ok, but in the end the result is the same, correct? I'm asking because when I was making cables for my uncles house, I was confused on which color code to choose. i chose B, and I was wondering if A would be ok also.

[Theophylact]

It shouldn't matter which you use, as long as you're consistent.