Network cable Cat5

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and vice versa.

Let's now have a look at the pinouts of a typical x-over CAT5 cable:

As you can see, only 4 pins are needed for a x-over cable. When you buy an x-over cable, you might find that all 8 pins are used, these cables aren't any different from the above, it's just that there are cables running to the unused pins. This won't make any difference in performance, but is just a habit some people follow.

Here are the pinouts for a x-over cable which has all 8 pins connected:

There is only one way to make a CAT5 x-over cable and it's pretty simple. Those who read the "wiring utp" section know an x-over cable is a a 568A on one end and a 568B on the other. If you haven't read the wiring section, don't worry because I'll be giving you enough information to understand what we are talking about.

Where else can I use an x-over?

What happens though if you haven't got any uplink ports or they are already used? The X-over cable will allow you to connect them and solve your problem. The diagram below shows a few examples to make it simpler:

As you can see in the above diagram, thanks to the uplink port, there is no need for a x-over cable.

Let's now have a look at how to cope when we don't have an uplink to spare, in which case we must make a x-over cable to connect the two hubs:

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X-over cables are not just used to connect computers, but a variety of other devices. Prime example are switches and hubs. If you have two hubs and you need to connect them, you would usually use the special uplink port which, when activated through a little switch (in most cases), makes that particular port not cross the tx and rx, but leave them as if they where straight through.