Hello Newbie here (hopefully I have the correct list),
I was just wondering if anyone knows of a website with recommended
colors for cables for a new datacenter?
I have written some things down but I don't want to get stuck saying
'darn, I wish I would have bought this color for this type, now I am
stuck'.
What standard color to use if voice and data on same interface etc. Thanks.
JoeSox wrote:
Hello Newbie here (hopefully I have the correct list),
I was just wondering if anyone knows of a website with recommended
colors for cables for a new datacenter?
I have written some things down but I don't want to get stuck saying
'darn, I wish I would have bought this color for this type, now I am
stuck'.
What standard color to use if voice and data on same interface etc. Thanks.
Hmm. I've always done blue for "safe" or "internal" connections, red for machines on the DMZ or outside.
Perhaps Blue for internal data, Yellow for internal voice, Green for data/voice?
Don't know if there's a website on this, but you can definitely read about it in Tom Limoncelli's The Practice of System and Network Administration book.
Best,
--Glenn
I think this varies a lot based on the environment...
I've seen :
- Red for external ("hot"), Blue for internal ("cold")
- Red for external ("stop this"), green for internal ("go/trusted")
- Red for internal ("stop this from leaving") and green for external ("go go go to the outside world")
- A combination of the either of the last two with "Yellow" for a cautionary DMZ area
And then there's the environment I'm in right now, where there are a LOT of different cable colors for different reasons.
The reality is, from my experience, to find a color combination that makes sense to you and is intuitive to you and the people who'll be working with the cables.
Amusing cautionary tale: confirm that you don't have any color-blind staff, and if you do, make sure they can differentiate all your cable colors before you set them in stone and deploy them. 
cheers,
D
Perhaps Blue for internal data, Yellow for internal voice, Green for
data/voice?
Some people reserve yellow for cross-over cables.
TIA-606A and some of the other TIA docs have cable color recommendations.
Scott Hebert wrote:
Some people reserve yellow for cross-over cables.
I was going to say yellow for serial consoles... but in this day and age, I guess the crossover cables AND serial console connection are fading fast.
- Ethan O'Toole
I don't know of any hard standard in use anywhere. I've generally taken
to the following:
Green == low-bandwidth straigh-through
Telephone, T1, Serial, etc.
Purple == Roll Cables (almost always serial, sometimes telecom)
(8-1 7-2 6-3 5-4 4-5 3-6 2-7 1-8)
Orange(C) == EIA-568b cross-over cable (ethernet xover)
Orange(F) == Multimode Fiber
Yellow(F) == Singlemode Fiber
White == Clear (inside VPN concentrator network)
Black == Crypt (Outside VPN concentrator network)
Blue == Publicly accessible networks
Red == Backend (usually OOB management) networks
Pink == KVM (KVM switch <-> Dongle)
Occasionally I encounter needs for greater specificity, but, these
usually do most of what I need.
I'm sure others use entirely different choices.
Owen
Crossover cables maybe, but I'm not convinced about serial. I just went through a whole installation of OOB access to all our network equipment "just in case"....
Cheers,
D
all you people are just sooooo retro and boring. i like purple,
fluorescent lime, ...
the colors make no difference as long as you are consistent. labeling,
consistent port use (oob port == power port == switch port ==) are what
will bail you out at three in the morning.
randy
JoeSox wrote:
Hello Newbie here (hopefully I have the correct list),
Not based on any standard, but here is a schema I have used many times:
White -- user workstations
Black -- telephones
Green -- guest users (direct Internet connection)
Purple -- RJ11 data cables (modem, faxes, etc.)
Yellow -- "never change" network infrastructure (inter-device,
servers, printers, etc.)
Orange -- serial console cable
Red -- telco T1s
Blue -- network infrastructure inter-device crossover
Jon
- --
Jon R. Kibler
Chief Technical Officer
Advanced Systems Engineering Technology, Inc.
Charleston, SC USA
o: 843-849-8214
c: 843-224-2494
s: 843-564-4224
My PGP Fingerprint is:
BAA2 1F2C 5543 5D25 4636 A392 515C 5045 CF39 4253
Very true. Another suggestion I will offer is that it is relatively
inexpensive to order cables with pre-printed serial numbers.
I get them for about $0.20/cable more than I could buy in bulk
and I get them in relatively low quantities. They cost about half
of what buying a cable at Fry's would cost.
I use a format of XXXXXX-YY.Y where XXXXXX is a unique
six digit number for the particular cable and YY.Y is the length
of that particular cable.
Having these serial numbers triple-printed on self-laminating
labels at each end of the cable makes them very easy to read
and makes it very easy to be sure before you pull a cable that
the A and Z ends are of the same cable, which, can also be
a saving factor at 3AM.
Owen
Jon Kibler wrote:
Not based on any standard, but here is a schema I have used many times:
<snip>
Where I used to work - ISP. All of the above - Yellow.
Where I work now - Enterprise. All of the above - Grey.
David
Once upon a time, plenum-rated cable only seemed to come in white or blue,
so I tried to use white consistently. Always helps to visually identify
the correct usage for POPs in existing buildings.
And, I've a tendency to use black for "internal network management" (unable
to be seen off LAN/VPN). Easy to tell staff "don't touch", and to visually
ensure going to the correct switch ports.
Yellow was pretty common for crossover cables, but now-a-days it's all
auto-sensing anyway.
JoeSox wrote:
Hello Newbie here (hopefully I have the correct list),
I was just wondering if anyone knows of a website with recommended
colors for cables for a new datacenter?
I have written some things down but I don't want to get stuck saying
'darn, I wish I would have bought this color for this type, now I am
stuck'.
What standard color to use if voice and data on same interface etc. Thanks.
As you can see, by and large, people assign colors to functions. What color to what function varies like the wind. Unlike a previous employer whose colo-manager person insisted on using colors to represent cable lengths (Doh!), color -> function mapping seems pretty universal.
About 7% of the male population in the US has red-green colorblindness, so keep that in mind. Simpler schemes trump more complex ones (as do most things in networking) and makes cable-purchasing/stocking less of an issue.
--Peter
At least in my son's case, bright colors -- like the typical red and
green cables -- are easily distinguishable. Pastels are more of a
problem. But for proper cabling, see
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I1X6PM -- and make sure you read
the comments...
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
I am seriously old school--"patch cords" for me conjure (in addition to the modern views) 4-wire patches and coax patches (some of which were called "hairpins").
To me far more important that color is tags, one on each end if it is more that a foot long.
The tags should have a short (two or three word) description, the authority for the patch (person's name or position, order number, or trouble ticket number) and where the _other_ end of the patch is, followed by where _this_ is. (For short cords "this" will cover both ends, probably.
Why "this end"? Make a mistake and pull the wrong one out of a mostly clear jack-field sometime. Clarity will occur.
And there you have it. Finding the group of backbone cables (as an example)
out of a bundle of cables is much easier when they're a different colour.
What colours we use depends on what area of the network we're in.
For example (for the DC):
- Access layer (ie: to servers): Blue
- Management network (KVM, power, etc): Green
- Private network (internal only): Black
- Inter-rack links (don't touch): yellow
- Network uplinks (really don't touch): red
-Shaun
My cables are all black, and are scented with different citrus fruits.
When I have a customer without as keen a sense of smell, I've noticed that my local patch cable vendor only does x-over in purple or beige. That made that decision for me fairly quickly.
Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
About 7% of the male population in the US has red-green colorblindness, so keep that in mind.
At least in my son's case, bright colors -- like the typical red and green cables -- are easily distinguishable. Pastels are more of a problem.
More than 50% of males are color challenged, even when they aren't color blind. I have noted that orange and red cables near each other can easily be confused, as can blues and greens that are too similar in hue. However...
But for proper cabling, see Amazon.com -- and make sure you read
the comments...
*That* link requires a put-down-your-coffee warning. Most notable is the number of stars in the rating, which goes hand in hand with the comments. Thank you. I still have tears in my eyes.
And, as I forgot to mention.
Crossover cables are the same colours based on their function above with a
different colour boot (red, unless the cable itself is red).
-Shaun