A server technician is connecting a server directly to a multilayer switch, without MDI-X. Which of the following cables should the server technician use?

A crossover cable swaps the transmit and receive pairs and is used to connect two like devices such as server to server or switch to switch, not a server to a switch.

Coaxial cable is used in legacy network standards such as 10BASE2 and is incompatible with modern Ethernet switch ports and server NICs.

A rollover cable is a console cable used for out-of-band management access to a device's serial console port and does not carry Ethernet data traffic.

A server NIC is an MDI device that transmits on pins 1 and 2 and receives on pins 3 and 6, while a multilayer switch port is an MDI-X device with the inverse pinout - receiving on pins 1 and 2 and transmitting on pins 3 and 6. A straight-through cable connects each pin directly to its counterpart, properly aligning the transmit pairs on one end with the receive pairs on the other. Auto-MDI-X automates cable-type detection and correction, but without it, a straight-through cable is still the correct manual choice when connecting unlike device types.