bradleym

You shouldn't need a crossover cable unless you're using old equipment. Most 10/100 switches for the last 10 years have N-way, which auto detects uplinks. And the Gigabit Ethernet protocol is auto detecting by default. Only one of the 2 switches would need to have an uplink port or N-way.

A properly made Cat5e cable will work fine up to Gigabit Ethernet. Make sure the cable is copper, not CCA. Make sure the wires are in the correct order, 568b is the standard.