Well, I had the pleasure/frustration of recently creating some patch cables. The problem was that I did not know what order the internal twisted pairs should be in. But here is the lesson I learned, and how to properly create a patch cable.

In the past I simply went to the nearest computer store and purchased cable in lengths that I needed, then I was done. However, I was recently faced with a box of Cat5e cable, tools, and RJ45 Modular plugs. I needed to make two cables that were both about 25 feet in length, and were to be plugged into a 3com VOIP phone that also had a workstation plugged into it.

After creating my first cable, I found that it worked for the workstation but the phone would not work. I created the cable so that the order of the internal wires were in the following order:

Wire Legend
striped green = wgrn
green = grn
stiped orange = wor
orange = or
striped blue = wblu
blue = blu
striped brown = wbro
brown = bro

Wrong Way!

wgrn – grn – wor – or – wblu – blu – wbro – bro

After much frustration I came to find out that the green and blue are usually handled in a different manner as a standard. So I remade the cables in the following pattern, and now everything works fine.

Right Way!

wgrn – gr – wor – blu – wblu – or – wbro – bro