I need to connect two switches. Do I use a xover cable or straight?
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Connecting two switches
- Thread starter mbeavers1
- Start date
Straight.
Crossover cables are for when you don't have a switch (or router) and you just need to link two things together. And even then I think a lot of devices auto-sense now so really crossover cables are history. I've NEVER used one.
Crossover cables are for when you don't have a switch (or router) and you just need to link two things together. And even then I think a lot of devices auto-sense now so really crossover cables are history. I've NEVER used one.
smoothie
Pulling my weight
- Dec 19, 2015
- 199
- 177
Try to use a straight cable first, most modern switches have the ability to detect another networking device on the cable and change the way they talk into a straight cable so that it works. A crossover cable used to be for connecting two networking devices together. Since a crossover cable has two of the four pairs change location with each other they can be very hard to recognize, often times crossover cables would have orange sheathing but that was not a reliable method for identification. Eventually networking manufacturers started including the "auto crossover" feature in their products where you could use a normal cable instead of the old required crossover and the networking devices would utilize the straight cable successfully. If you connect the straight cable to both switches and they light up then you are good to go. If they don't light up then you likely have older switches that will require a crossover cable.
For the test any length straight cable will work, they need only be connected for a few seconds to see that they are showing "link light" on both switches. The lights should come on nearly instantaneously when you connect the cable between the switches.
Most new switches have "auto crossover" on all ports.
Some moderately old switches have "auto crossover" only on specific ports, usually the first or last ports on the switch.
Some much older switches have a "crossover" button on the face of the switch which usually would apply to only 1 port on the switch. This is pushed in to tell the switch the cable in, most likely, port 1 is a straight cable but it should be a crossover. Think of this like "manual crossover" instead of "auto crossover"
And finally all very old switches will not understand any communications between switches unless you actually use a crossover cable to connect them.
For the test any length straight cable will work, they need only be connected for a few seconds to see that they are showing "link light" on both switches. The lights should come on nearly instantaneously when you connect the cable between the switches.
Most new switches have "auto crossover" on all ports.
Some moderately old switches have "auto crossover" only on specific ports, usually the first or last ports on the switch.
Some much older switches have a "crossover" button on the face of the switch which usually would apply to only 1 port on the switch. This is pushed in to tell the switch the cable in, most likely, port 1 is a straight cable but it should be a crossover. Think of this like "manual crossover" instead of "auto crossover"
And finally all very old switches will not understand any communications between switches unless you actually use a crossover cable to connect them.
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