I recently moved into a new home office, and with that came connecting all sorts of cables to a few computers. I had a router with an attached USB for my home media server, an Ethernet switch, and some gaming consoles. While I was plugging devices into the router and the Ethernet switch, I noticed something interesting. The Ethernet cables that I had been using for years came in several different colors.
A few cables were yellow, orange, black, and even gray, but most of them were blue, which got me wondering what these various colored cables meant. Most general connection cables come in two different colors, usually in black or white. Black is a popular color for computers, game consoles, televisions, and more. White is another popular color for devices, and a pretty standard color scheme for walls within a home.
USB connections come in different colors to signify their capabilities, so one might think there’s also a reason for Ethernet cables to have different colors. But the reality is thatEthernet cable colors don’t mean anything, at least not in a technical sense.
Ethernet cable colors serve a purpose
I might be a more unique case as I prefer Ethernet connections for all my devices, even if I have to use a USB connection as an Ethernet port. But most people probably only need a couple of Ethernet cables to connect their internet modem to a Wi-Fi router and a computer, so color shouldn’t be an issue.
While Ethernet cable colors do not signify anything in terms of their specification, they are incredibly important to the information technology professionals using them. Especially in a large office or an industrial space, these people deal with dozens or hundreds of Ethernet cables. When managing that many connections, it’s better to have an easy way to differentiate groups of cables based on their purpose, such as having one color for data transfers and another for emergency systems. Figuring out the difference between all these Ethernet connections would be much more difficult if all were the same color.
Every company’s IT department probably has its own preferences in terms of how it organizes its cables and what color is assigned for what purpose. Businesses that implement a standardized color code for Ethernet cabling can see a 25% reduction in downtime, resulting in huge cost savings. For most home users, though, the blue Ethernet cable is just a cable like any other.
