Copper Cabling Connectors

Twisted pair copper cabling uses Registered Jack (RJ) connectors for physical interface.

RJ45 Connectors

Twisted pair cabling for Ethernet can be terminated using modular RJ45 connectors
used with 4-pair copper cables
referred to as 8P8C (8-position/8-contact)
- all 8 potential wire positions are supplied with contacts
Each conductor in four-pair Ethernet cable is color-coded
- Each pair is assigned a color (orange, green, blue, and brown)
- first conductor in each pair has a predominantly white insulator with stripes of the color
- the second conductor has an insulator with the solid color
The ANSI/TIA/EIA-568 standard defines two termination methods for twisted pair

Twisted-pair can also be used with RJ11 connectors.

smaller than RJ45
uses 2-pair copper cable
other pair is usually unused
- can be deployed for a secondary circuit
can support six positions, but only center two contacts are wired (6P2C)
widely used in:
- telephone systems
  - pair carries the dial tone and voice circuit
  - also called tip and ring wires
    - bc of the way older phone plugs were wired
- broadband digital subscriber line (DSL) modems
- connect analog data modems to a phone jack
other six position connectors are the same physical form factor but wired to use more pairs
- RJ14 is 6P4C
- RJ25 is 6P6C