A rollover cable is a specialized serial cable primarily used to connect a computer's serial port to the console port of a network router or switch for out-of-band management. The wiring scheme reverses the pin order completely from end to end: pin 1 goes to pin 8, pin 2 to pin 7, and so on. They are typically flat, light blue cables with RJ45 connectors on both ends.
Heard on the job
Grab a rollover cable and a USB-to-serial adapter so we can get into the core switch and fix the management IP.
Insider tip
These are almost exclusively used for initial device configuration or disaster recovery when network access is down.
Also heard as
- console cable
- Yost cable
- Cisco cable