What is the difference between a fly lead and a patch cord?

Answer 1

Generally a patch lead is shorter i.e. used in the patch panel. THe fly lead was generally used to connect an ethernet station to a network point, these are generally longer. These were common terms which were used when ethernet began to get popular. Unfortunately not many 'professionals' know the difference as they were brought up in the 'new age' of networking not using the terms.

The reason for the two 'different' cables is pure tidyness. Quite often you see patch panels with LONG trailing fly leads patching various ports. This is quite messy if you had a large network. Using patch leads, you could make them up to an exact length, following the cable ducts to make it cleaner to look at and ultimately easier to troubleshoot.

Despite having different names, they are both wired exactly the same:

Orange/White

Orange

Green/White

Blue

Blue/White

Green

Brown/White

Brown