Four-pair crossover cable is required for Gig connection between switch ports that do not auto-cross. But I believe the pinout in the Cisco document is incorrect.
Here's what I use:
1-----3
2-----6
3-----1
6-----2
5-----7
4-----8
7-----5
8-----4
The difference is the order of Pair 1's pins. Cisco shows them in numerical sequenced order: 4, then 5. But electronically, in an EIA/TIA-568A or B jack, I believe the correct order is 5, then 4. Which is how I show it above.
Try it Cisco's way first; then try mine. Worst-case is, the switches recognize valid signaling only over the first two cross-over pairs (1,2 and 3,6), and treat the connection as a Fast Ethernet link.
Hope this helps. Let us know how it goes.
ADDED: As for redundancy, if you daisy-chain the four switches (switch1 connects to switch2, 2 connects to 3, and 3 connects to 4), you end up with a port available on switch1 and switch4. Connect them, and you create a loop; Spanning Tree Protocol should kick in and block traffic on one of the inter-switch links. Traffic will flow over that link ONLY when one of the other inter-switch links goes down for some reason.
You can control which one it blocks; but you should read up on Spanning Tree first, to have an idea of what it does by default, and how you can override that behavior if necessary. There's a great Cisco Press book, "Cisco LAN Switching", that has two chapters devoted to Spanning Tree. In fact, if you'd like to read them online, go to www.CiscoPress.com and look for that book title. The two complete chapters on STP are included in the sample chapters they have online.
