>         Anyone know why telephone line cords are assembled with a "flip"?
>  Actually, the flip SEEMS like it'd be a great idea for data cables.  All
> sockets would be wired the same.  The swapping of transmit and receive
> pairs would happen in the cable flip.  You could hook anything to
> anything (eliminating the old RS232 DTE/DCE problem).
>
We did this here at work. Used 25 pair phone cable to 6 RJ-45 boxes. We
feed System 25 phones,analog lines,RS232 and 10 Base-T via RJ-45 patch
panels. All straight cables with
RS232 RJ-45/DB shells wired so we can use crossed cables used for
DTE-DTE.