nanog mailing list archives

Re: Cable Colors


From: "Martin Hannigan" <hannigan () verneglobal com>
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:15:42 -0000


This seems like a good demarcation for the colors, but two things. Its a bit more expensive, and, it typically makes 
for a pretty mess. You're talking pre determined cable lengths for the most part. I tend to avoid patch cables like the 
plague and invest in long term deployments cut to length. 

Intelligently strapping in mostly permanent wiring should be worth the investment and reduce outages in the long run. 
The colors don't hurt. 

Best,

Marty




----- Original Message -----
From: Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>
To: Glenn Sieb <ges () wingfoot org>
Cc: nanog () nanog org <nanog () nanog org>
Sent: Mon Jun 16 22:56:45 2008
Subject: Re: Cable Colors

I don't know of any hard standard in use anywhere.  I've generally taken
to the following:

Green == low-bandwidth straigh-through
        Telephone, T1, Serial, etc.
Purple == Roll Cables (almost always serial, sometimes telecom)
        (8-1 7-2 6-3 5-4 4-5 3-6 2-7 1-8)
Orange(C) == EIA-568b cross-over cable (ethernet xover)
Orange(F) == Multimode Fiber
Yellow(F) == Singlemode Fiber
White == Clear (inside VPN concentrator network)
Black == Crypt (Outside VPN concentrator network)
Blue == Publicly accessible networks
Red == Backend (usually OOB management) networks
Pink == KVM (KVM switch <-> Dongle)

Occasionally I encounter needs for greater specificity, but, these
usually do most of what I need.

I'm sure others use entirely different choices.

Owen



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