When wiring up an IP camera, or any other IP device for that matter, you must use a CAT 5 data cable containing 4 pairs of wires. Each pair consists of a solid coloured wire and a strip of the same colour on a white background. The plugs used for connecting network cables are called RJ45 plugs and RJ stands for "Registered Jack".

There are two standard colour codes for RJ-45 wiring: T-568A and T-568B. Although there are 4 pairs of wires, 10BaseT/100BaseT Ethernet uses only 2 pairs: Orange and Green. The other two colours (blue and brown) may be used for a second Ethernet line or for phone connections. The two wiring standards are used to create a cross-over cable (T-568A on one end, and T-568B on the other end), or a straight-through cable (T-568B or T-568A on both ends).

You would normally use a standard T-568B wiring for both ends of your CAT 5 cable when connecting equipment such as IP Cameras, Printers and Computers etc. to a Router or to an ethernet switch or hub. (you could use both T-568A instead but this is less common and not recommended).

If you have to connect a computer to another computer directly with an Ethernet cable or an IP Camera directly to a Computers RJ45 socket then you would need a "cross over" cable. A cross over cable uses one end wired as T-568A and one wired as T-568B.

It is also possible to use just the 4 wires needed for the Ethernet connection and examples are aslo shown for this below, but for maximum compatibility and continuity of standards its recommended to use the 8 wire configurations shown.