When is crossover cable needed?

[Will Rickards]

So when is a crossover cable needed.
I'm going to be running a network cable from a lan port on my verizon router to the internet/wan port on my netgear WNDR4500 router. Should I use a crossover cable for this or just a regular network cable? I think crossovers are just for bridging routers via connecting one lan port to another, correct?

 

[Stereodude]

They're not anymore if you're dealing with gigabit. Some 100Mbit stuff has auto-MDIX also.

 

[Stereodude]

PS: AFAIK the only place you've ever needed a crossover cable was going between two LAN adapters without a hub or switch which isn't your scenario anyhow.

 

[ddrueding]

I remember way back in the day needing a crossover between my DSL modem and a router, (in addition to the NIC<->NIC mentioned) but that has been many years.

SD is right on all counts. Anything with Gigabit has auto-MDX in the spec, most modern 100Mbit switches include auto-MDX as well.

 

[time]

Even before then, port #1 was often provisioned with Auto-MDIX. So you would always use port 1 on one router/switch when connecting to another.

Bottom line: we'd all be very surprised if you needed a crossover cable.