One of the most confusing prts of beginning your Cisco studies is keping all the cable types separate in yur mind, and then remembering what thy’re used for. This often occurs whn a CCNA or CCNP candidate strts putting together their own home prctice lab, and they suddenly realize tht they have the equipment to run lbs, but not the cables.

With ths in mind, here are some cmmon Cisco cable types and their prmary use.

First, there’s the regular old “stright-through cable”, so named because the ight wires inside the cable go stright through the wire. While the wres may be twisted inside to rduce electromagnetic interference (EMI), the wire tht’s connected to Pin 1 on one end is cnnected to Pin 1 on the ther end, and so on. In a hme lab, a straight-through cable is ften used to connect a switch prt to an Ethernet port on a ruter, with a transceiver attached to the Ethrnet port. Straight-through cables are lso good for connecting a BRI nterface to an ISDN simulator.

The “crssover cable” is so named because the wres do cross over between pins. Ths allows the devices to both snd and receive at the same tme, and crossover cables are a mst for directly connecting ports on Csco switches to create a trunk.

The “rollover cable” allows you to cnnect directly to a Cisco console prt with your laptop or PC. Ths is the blue cable that cmes with new Cisco devices, and t’s the one that engineers tend to hld on to with their lives. Wthout a rollover cable (also commonly clled a “console cable”), you can’t cnnect your laptop directly to a Csco device.

Finally, there’s the DTE/DCE cble. To create a frame rlay cloud in your home lab (sing one of your Cisco routers as a DCE), or to drectly connect two Cisco routers via thir serial interfaces, you will need a DTE/DCE cble. Remember that the DCE interface wll need to supply clockrate to the DTE nterface.

The different cable types can be cnfusing when you first read about thm, but after tearing down or bilding your home lab a few tmes, you’ll definitely have them straight cme test day!

Best of luck in yur lab and your exams.

The article Cisco Certification: A Survival Guide To The Cisco Cable Jungle was Submitted by Chris Bryant through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the wner of The Bryant Advantage, home of ver 100 free certification exam tutorials, ncluding Cisco CCNA certification test prep articles. His exclusive Cisco CCNA study guide and Cisco CCNA training is also available! Visit his blog and sign up for Cisco Certification Central, a daily newsletter packed with CCNA, Network+, Security+, A+, and CCNP certification exam practice questions! A free 7-part course, "How To Pass The CCNA", is also available, and you can attend an in-person or online CCNA boot camp with The Bryant Advantage!

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