Fiber to Switch to Cable Switch

[scubagal]

I know you are supposed to use a crossover cable to connect two switches together. But, if you have a fiber switch with a cable coming out and going in to a converter that comes out UTP, does the cat5 coming out of the converter going into a regular switch need to be crossover?

[juniper]

No, the converter should do it for you. but then again it depends on the media converter.

[bassman]

Switches, Bridges, Routers, and Hubs detect direction of flow and accommodate controlling it. You ONLY need to use a crossover between two NIC’s.
(at least that's what I learned in network class, but that’s been a couple of years)

[Variable]

Switches, Bridges, Routers, and Hubs detect direction of flow and accommodate controlling it. You ONLY need to use a crossover between two NIC’s

This is not generally true. When connecting like devices you need a crossover cable. Some devices will auto sense and switch. This could be a problem with two devices that do auto sensing and are from different manufactures :) Hubs and switches can have a uplink port (http://duxcw.com/faq/network/uplink.htm) that can be manually switched when connecting to a like device. Here is a good link for understanding what cables are needed for what

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/132.html

Much of the devices used in current networks are older. You should follow what is recommended in your manual.

[juniper]

The difference here is he is connecting to a media converter before the second switch. switch 1 has fiber port, switch 2 has a media converter taking it from fiber to cat5 into switch 2 so usualy no crossover is needed between the converter and switch 2 as it is built into the converter or at least all of the ones Ive used it was but I can not guarantee this for all manufacturers. Variable is correct on the other situations also.

[scubagal]

Thanks for all of the feedback. I actually went to the website for the fiber switch which is Blackbox and got info from them too. They said that a straight thru should work fine. At the moment a crossover is being used and all is working well. It is not going thru the uplink port.