What is a Crossover Cable?
Crossover cables may look like standard network cables but in fact they are very different. With a standard network cable all the wires inside the cable are “straight through” which means that the color of the wire at one end matches the color at the other end. If you hold the connectors together side by side on a standard cable you can see that the colors are matched up exactly. On a crossover cable they will look different. With store bought crossover cables, usually the cable is one color and the connectors are another color, this makes it easy to distinguish it from a standard cable, but homemade crossover cables can look just like standard cables, so in that case you would again hold the connectors together side by side and you can tell whether its standard or crossover. Crossover cables are generally used to connect to PCs together via the network cards or ports without needing a hub or a switch. This can be useful if you want to transfer data between PCs without connecting them
A crossover cable might sound like a thing of the past, but it is still in use today in various capacities. A crossover cable is used to interconnect two computers for the purpose of direct communication. Another name for crossover cable is null modem. You might want to test the behavior of one computer by connecting it to another. You might want to connect two computers to avoid having to buy a hub. You and a friend might want to compete against each other in a multiplayer game. In each of these instances, you can use a crossover cable to achieve your goals. For the first two instances, you will want to make sure that the two computers are in the same Workgroup. If they are not, then they will not be able to “see” each other. Once they are members of the same Workgroup, the data transfer or monitoring can begin. Actually, the Workgroup requirement might be in force for multiplayer gaming as well. Check the protocols for both the game and the crossover cable to be sure. Many network ca
