Cat 5e wired backwards

Question

I realized after a day I crimped all my cat 5e backwards. Best way to explain what i did, I pushed the wire combination into the connector upside down. So instead of orange to brown, its brown to orange. Should I redo them? They seem to work just fine so far.

Answer 1

As long as the two ends match it should be fine. If you were to split twisted pairs incorrectly it could cause issues but any configuration of AABCCBDD should work (provided it's exactly the same on both ends [solid to solid, striped to striped]) nNgBbGoO to nNgBbGoO will work just as well as OoGbBgNn to OoGbBgNn Crosstalk would be introduced along with performance degredation if you were to not use twisted pairs for pins 1&2, 3&6, 4&5, 7&8. (Though depending on the application this may not actually matter, 10/100 base T, for instance, doesn't care at all about pins 4, 5, 7, & 8)

(There's also the risk that someone could for some reason reterminate one end without reterminating the other, and that could be really bad, depending on the exact application)

The reason 568A works as well as 568B is because all the pairs are functionally the same. As far as any electronic device is concerned, there's no fundamental difference between the solid and striped wires either, though not aligning solids/stripes to the left/right makes ensuring both ends are terminated the same exact way much more difficult.

See this site or this SU post

Answer 2

If you have done the same at both ends, then there is no problem (unless and until you ever replace one of the connectors, when you must remember to do that backwards). The arrangement of pairs is symmetrical, so 1+2 can be exchanged with 7+8, and 3+6 can be exchanged with 4+5. The wires comprising the cable are all electrically identical.

Reference: Wikipedia: T568 wiring