Ethernet Cabling Basics

If you plan on earning your Cisco Certified Network Associate certification, you will need to understand Ethernet cabling. Ethernet cables come in three forms: straight-through, crossover, and rolled cables.

A straight-through cable connects a host or router to a switch or hub. These cables consist of four wires. With straight-through cables, pins 1, 2, 3, and 6 are used with 1 connecting to 1, 2 connecting to 2, and so on.

A crossover cable supports additional connections such as a switch to switch, a hub to a switch, a host to a host, or a router to a host. Just as the straight-through cable used pins 1, 2, 3, and 6, so does the crossover cable. In this case, the crossover cable connects pins 1 to 3 and 2 to 6.

A rolled cable is used with a converter to connect a host to a router console com port. For example, rolled cables can be used to connect a PC with HyperTerminal to a Cisco router or switch. These cables use 8 wires, though not all wires send information.

After connecting a PC to the Cisco router or switch, you can configure the Cisco hardware via HyperTerminal. Set the bits per second to 9600; the data bits to 8; the parity to none; the stop bits to 1; and flow control to none.

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