Unfamiliar Cat5e Ethernet Outlet Wire Order

[davidlyons]

http://screencast.com/t/9Lhfe9cK

So I had internet service installed a few days ago. There are 3 floors on my apartment, with ethernet and coax on each floor. I had the technician install the modem / router on the 2nd floor. I am looking into connecting my router to the ethernet outlet on the 2nd floor and crimping + connecting the ethernet cables in the panel in the closet with either a switch or a coupler so I could also use the ethernet outlets on the 1st and 3rd floors, but the ethernet outlet wiring orders don't seem to be following either T568A or T568B.

The wiring order in the outlet's cat5e keystone appears to be: O o/ g/ b/ B G BR br/
There are two diagrams inside of the keystone labeled A and B, and the wiring order matches the diagram for B, even though it's a different order than the T568B diagrams I've seen online, like http://www.herrold.com/ethernet/RJ45.gif

I can't find anything about this keystone's wire color order online. Does anyone recognize it?
Or is the B in the keystone's diagram referring to T568B and that's what it actually is?
If not, if I leave the outlets as is and use a T568B cable with them, would I need crossover adapters?

Should I crimp the cables in the panel to match the outlet order?
Crimp the cables in the panel as T568B?
Rewire the outlets to match T568B?

 

[derek3ton]

The color order for the keystones are different than the order of a straight through or crossover cable you would normally make and can vary from keystone to keystone. If you are looking at making a regular Cat5e cable to connect to that keystone, then just use the standard T568B.

 

[bill001g]

It does appear someone has the green pair cabled backward. ie the green/white and green are swapped. As long as you do that on the other end of the cable it will be fine. It is just confusing but the electrical signals do not actually know the color of the wires. As long as you are consistently wrong and don't get the wires from different pairs mixed up it will work.

 

[davidlyons]

It does appear someone has the green pair cabled backward. ie the green/white and green are swapped. As long as you do that on the other end of the cable it will be fine. It is just confusing but the electrical signals do not actually know the color of the wires. As long as you are consistently wrong and don't get the wires from different pairs mixed up it will work.

It actually appears that all of the pairs except for the green/white and green are swapped. Hmm.

 

[bill001g]

Was only half awake but you are correct the colors on all pairs except that one are backwards. The simplest solution is to just verify that the other end is also done wrong the same way.

 

[davidlyons]

Okay, I crimped the cables in the panel with the wire order matching the outlets, connected two of them with a coupler, and they all seem to be working with a T568B cable connected to the outlets. Thanks

I also tried plugging one of the cables from the panel straight into my computer, and that seems to work too even though it's not exactly T568B. Maybe it's some variant of T568B?

 

[bill001g]

All you have to do to make it t568 compliant is take a bunch of colored markers and change the color of the wires. The most important part was done correctly that each pair of wires was connected to the correct pair in the jack. The problems really come if you connect the pairs incorrectly.

Although part of the spec for ethernet requires that the wire pairs have slightly different number of twist/inch there really is no difference in the pairs. People just follow 1 of 2 color patterns mostly because of historical reasons when only 2 pair were used with 10/100.

You should see all the colors of wires in 100 pair cables.

 

[Clayto1332]

Whoever did that had no idea what they were doing... The RIGHT thing to do would be to gently pull the wires out of the CAT5e jack and punch them down in whatever order is marked for T568B but most do-it-yourselfers don't have a punch down tool. As long as it is working leave it be but somewhere down the road some unlucky fellow is going to see that/have to work on it and punch everything down the right way.

I would take a wild guess and say a maintenance guy did this.