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I have some cable labeled CE-CABLE UTP 24x4P 5E-AZ CMX NEXAN. I've looked up Nexan but didn't find anything useful.

My issue is that this cable in particular has no stripes, which is what guides you through sorting the order of the copper before crimping.

Here is an image of the cable:

cable

NOTE: there is also a light green which for some reason I missed out on the photo. Its right behind the blue and light blue ones you can see it slightly.

What are the translations of each solid color to the standard color/color-stripe layout?

The colors include:

Brown
Light Brown
Green
Light Blue
Blue
Light Green
Orange
White
(there is no light-orange)

Just as an update, I've gone with the above order in both sides and it passes the 1-8 test just fine.

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  • What's at the other end? Can't you use that to work it out?
    – DavidPostill
    Apr 4, 2016 at 19:09
  • Its a clean cable I am crimping both sides, it will be a PC to router connection.
    – Prix
    Apr 4, 2016 at 19:17
  • Is this labelled Cat5 or Cat5e? Apr 4, 2016 at 19:20
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    Seems related networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/18084/… . The suggestion to strip back a little more of the outer cabling to see what it is matched. Logically though, dark and light are probably paired, except for orange, which ought to be paired with white.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Apr 4, 2016 at 19:25
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    Generally the result of incorrect pairing is horrible packet loss. If your packet loss looks fine then I wouldn't worry about it.
    – plugwash
    Apr 5, 2016 at 11:04

2 Answers 2

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I would strongly urge getting more standard wire because you are just setting a trap for anyone who has to maintain this. But this should work, assuming the cable actually meets the category requirements for the type of signal you're trying to carry:

  1. Look at the wire carefully and figure out which colors are twisted together.

  2. Make a mapping from standard wire colors to your wire colors ensuring that each color and its corresponding striped wire are paired. So, for example, if your green and dark blue are paired, you can map them to orange and orange/white.

  3. Carefully wire each end using your mapping to ensure the pairs are mapped to pins correctly.

This is vital to get right. Otherwise, the twists won't perform their essential function of causing interference to cancel itself out.

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  • Agreed, however it would appear much more likely that it's the darker and lighter variations of the same color that are paired, in which case the mapping is also more obvious. Apr 4, 2016 at 19:32
  • That seems reasonable to expect, but I'd double check. Apr 4, 2016 at 19:36
  • Seems so, at least it seems to be working with the test kit. Thanks. Well Its some personal cabling of 1 stretch and I had this cable laying around, which was why I used it :)
    – Prix
    Apr 4, 2016 at 20:18
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Most likely the dark colors correspond to the solid colors from the standard and the light colors to the stripe colors from the standard. That leaves orange and white which I expect are the remaining pair.

But it's probablly worth stripping the cable back a bit more to check that the cables are indeed paired the way I would expect them to be.

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