Difference between blue and yellow wires.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: May 24, 2006 Posts: 4

Is there any difference between the blue wire and the yellow wire (or any other ethernet wire for that matter)?

I'm attempting to setup my phone for a business... my office is a sub-lease, and as such, my "internet connection" consists of a cat5 cable that's being run into the office from a router (which I don't currently have access to).

I've tried to take the cable that's being run into the office and putting it into the Internet slot of my vt2442. Though my power/status light eventually turns a solid green, I have no dial-tone. Granted, it may be that the router isn't setup properly, as I'm not 100% sure of how to setup the dual router situation when I only have access to one. Oh, my router status shows "Provisioning failed".

Anyway, my main question is, does one "have" to use the blue wire when connecting two routers? Or can any ethernet cable, such as then one coming into the office, be used?

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: May 26, 2006 Posts: 4

I may be wrong, but as far as I know, there is nothing special about the cables. I don't think I'm using the network cables that came with the device, for instance. I believe the color-coding is for the convenience of those less technical folks who are installing this on their own.

I wish I could be more helpful, but I'm sure someone else will be.

C

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: May 24, 2006 Posts: 3

Both the yellow and the blue cables are identical in wiring. The color of the jackets are only to aid a user who is not familiar with networking to plug everything into the right place:

"Take one end of the yellow cable and plug it into the yellow port on the Vonage adapter then take the other end of the yellow cable and plug it into your modem" is a lot easier for a non-techincal person to understand.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: May 24, 2006 Posts: 4

Thanks... just wanted to make sure I wasn't wasting my time trying to setup the Vonage router when it wouldn't have ever worked with the cable coming into the office.

As long as they're the same, then I'm off into the world of trying to get this thing configured, and hopefully, one day receive a dialtone. Very Happy

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: May 24, 2006 Posts: 3

You can use any standard CAT5e patch cord in place of the Yellow and Blue wires.

Posts: 58

Joedv wrote:

Is there any difference between the blue wire and the yellow wire (or any other ethernet wire for that matter)?

The only difference between the two wires is colour. They are functionally identical. The colour scheme is simply to help less technically savvy users to connect their equipment properly -- a little colour can go a long way in preventing unnecessary support calls.

This isn't to say that all ethernet cables are the same. There are two distinct types of RJ-45 connector cable (I'll ignore BNC cabling, as nobody really uses it much anymore) -- the regular "straight through" cable, and a "crossover" cable, which crosses the RX and TX lines between the two ends of the cable, so you can directly hook up two computers without the need for a router. This too is becoming rarer these days however, as many ethernet controller chipsets now contain an auto-crossover circuit, in order to permit the use of a standard straight-through cable to connect two machines.

Other than this, the only other distinguishing trait for ethernet cables is which signalling standard they conform to. This is the "Category" (or often just "Cat") rating. This is important to keep in mind, because using a category of cabling that is lower than what your equipment requires is going to seriously degrade performance, or simply may not work at all. Cat3 cables, for example, are designed for 10Mb/s network, and will degrade your performance if used as part of a 1000Mb/s or 1Gb/s network. The category rating of the cable can be found in small print on the cable sheath. Chances are if you haven't been picking through used parts bins, all of your cables are Cat5 or better (the current minimum standard for 100Mb/s Ethernet is Cat5e, however older Cat5 cables can still be found, and will work just fine).

This article might help you somewhat:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable

HTH!

Yaz.