Ethernet Port Colour Legend

What the green, blue, and yellow port colours in the Portal mean, and how to spot a cable problem from the colour alone.

Every Uplevel device ships with 1 Gbps auto-negotiating Ethernet ports. When two devices negotiate a link, one of three speeds is selected — and the Portal shows the result via colour on the relevant port:

Negotiated speed Portal colour
1000BASE-T (1 Gbps) Green
100BASE-T (100 Mbps) Blue
10BASE-T (10 Mbps) Yellow

Reading the colours during troubleshooting

If you cable two devices that should negotiate at 1 Gbps but the port shows blue or yellow, the negotiation has fallen back to a lower speed for a reason. The usual causes:

  • One of the twisted pairs in the cable has degraded — 1000BASE-T uses all four pairs; 100BASE-T uses two; 10BASE-T uses two of the four. A damaged pair drops the link to the fastest speed all four pairs can support.
  • The cable is Cat5, not Cat5e or higher. Cat5 is rated through 100BASE-T only — it doesn’t reliably carry 1 Gbps. Cat5e is the minimum for gigabit; Cat6 is preferable for new installs.

In either case the fix is the cable, not the gateway. Swap it for a known-good Cat5e/Cat6 run and re-check the colour.

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