A datacenter technician needs to wire several switches together to increase port capacity. These switches do not have auto-MDI capability. Which of the following types of cable is the technician…

A Cat 6 straight-through cable is used to connect unlike devices such as a switch to a PC; using it between two switches without auto-MDI/MDIX results in TX-to-TX and RX-to-RX connections that cannot communicate.

Like devices such as switch-to-switch both transmit on the same wire pairs (pins 1 and 2) and receive on the same pairs (pins 3 and 6). Without auto-MDI/MDIX to automatically compensate, a crossover cable is required to swap the transmit and receive pairs so each switch's TX connects to the other's RX. Cat 5 supports the speeds typical of switch-to-switch interconnects, making Cat 5 crossover the correct choice.

A Cat 5e straight-through cable has the same pin-pairing problem as a Cat 6 straight-through and will not support switch-to-switch communication without auto-MDI/MDIX.

A rollover cable reverses all pins sequentially and is used for out-of-band console management access to routers and switches, not for carrying data traffic between switches.