As I switch the ethernet plug between my Karma and my Empeg, I can't help but notice that their ethernet ports are upside down relative to eachother ... This complicates the unfrozen caveman programmer's life as I try to force the square peg into the round hole for 10-15 seconds before remember this fact.

So my question -- Is there an official "correct" ethernet jack orientation, and if so, which one of these lovely Rio devices is the devil?

ms

Dunno about "official", but tab DOWN is "normal".

Cheers

Maybe on that side of the pond, but I would say that tab UP is normal over this side.

Ports with lights on (like the Karma's one) only make sense tab-up.

Peter

Not trying to be contrary or difficult (okay, I am, really...), the switches in the office have the tabs facing left and right on the blades for the switches...

FWIW, when I used to work for a company that did network cabling for offices, we always put tab up.

So how does it feel to be DEAD WRONG?

Most of my equipment is tab down, but my laptop (a Dell) has a tab up port. I made my dock with the jack tab down.

have the tabs facing left and right on the blades for the switches...

That's just plain wrong.

But really, up, down, even left or right - about the only thing I want is room to get a finger to the tab. I get tired of digging out a screwdriver to press the tab because it's too close to another tab or a cable or a metal lip of some sort and my big, fat fingers just won't fit.

-jk

I'm looking at my two netgear boxes... a switch and a router... and even they are opposite. The switch has tabs up the router tabs down. On the back of almost every PC i've ever seen, it's tab down, unless it's sideways... which it often is on the onboard ethernet type... Hm.

Yeah, I've seen an equal amount of both tab-up and tab-down, and I too get frustrated by it sometimes.

Of course, the worst is when you're reaching around behind a tower-case PC where the ATX motherboard is vertical, and you're trying to guess left or right.

And then there's the hubs with two rows of jacks: Those are most logical when arranged with the tabs facing outward (one up one down) so that you don't have to reach between rows of plugged in cables to reach the tabs.

I agree that having the LED indicators in the "most visible" position is the most logical (i.e., tab up for ports with built in LEDs), but I have a personal preference for wanting things to be tab-down:

Dust.

Sometimes a given ethernet port will spend large portions of its lifespan with nothing plugged into it. During that time, if it's a tab-up port, dust can settle on the connectors, making them less likely to give a good connection when the port finally gets used. If the port is aligned tab-down, the dust settles only on the tab click-in plastic bit, not on the connectors themselves.

Whenever I install an ethernet jack, it is almost always tab down. If for nothing else, than because since most of them are below arm level, it's more natural to push in the tab from the bottom, pulling towards you, rather than have to bend your wrist back while trying to push the tab down, and pull at the same time. This just makes those of us that are borderline carpal tunnel a little more comfortable.

The majority of RJ45 connectors are tab down when mounted on a pcb, especially the older/simpler connectors. So I'd expect to see tab down on most equipment, and it was certainly the norm a few years back - the main reason that you might find an inverted connector would be because the pcb was mounted face down within the case (for whatever reason).
Newer connectors with integrated LEDs seem to come in both denominations. I have no idea why that is though. Maybe the LEDS-on-top-are-easier-to-see theory is a factor. I also wonder whether the switch from ISA to PCI might have also been a factor (they are opposite in orientation), Who knows?

the pcb was mounted face down within the case

This is generally because PCI and ISA boards go on opposite sides of the hole in the case, and so one is upside down wrt the other. Early PCI boards used up the stock of ISA components, which is why network sockets and monitor sockets end up reversed.