To the networking guys

[Zirax]

Thought you would appreciate this. Just had a quick shifty around the office ducting while the network engineers were in.

The main data lines to/fro rackmount switches were black, in their own ducting and cable tied.
The cable going to the desks from the switches were pink, in their own ducting and cable tied.
Upon going to the main switches for the floor, the links between the switches were cable tied to the left, with the pink cables cable tied together on the right, according to which switch they were plugged into.

If network cabling could be an artform, that was it..... it was impressive and yet a thing of beauty at the same time :D Really it should be good seeing that we are an IT company, but normally that means nothing.

[Daz]

Heh, me and Burble talked about this once - we're both bastards when it comes to cabling! Colour coded, labelled at both ends, and tidy - end of :D

[Dr. Z]

I might have to post a pic of my cabling in a bit...

[Davey_Pitch]

Heh, me and Burble talked about this once - we're both bastards when it comes to cabling! Colour coded, labelled at both ends, and tidy - end of :D
I remember chatting to you about it recently as well. We're crap here at work, but in a school you can't really disconnect the network long enough to colour code and label everything. They're meant to be doing a network topology review/change in the summer though when there's no kids around, so I might see about at least labelling everything then, would make life soooo much easier in full network cabinets.

[Dr. Z]

Ok, here we go :p Daz, I suggest you dont look :D

Network cables start off here:

http://www.statichiss.co.uk/IMAGE_00101.jpg

Then join this:


http://www.statichiss.co.uk/IMAGE_00102.jpg

http://www.statichiss.co.uk/IMAGE_00103.jpg

More here:


http://www.statichiss.co.uk/IMAGE_00104.jpg

Then here:


http://www.statichiss.co.uk/IMAGE_00105.jpg

I do TRY and lay them tidily, but then I move stuff about so often its hard to keep right :(

[Daz]

Heheee, if you did that for me, then I'd be making you do it again :D

[Haly]

I remember chatting to you about it recently as well.

I've not really chatted to Daz about it, but I have been told what's wrong with my various cablings ;D :p

[Daz]

Run cables across the floor she says... NAY said I!

[Haly]

You'd die if you saw the cabling in Swansea :D
4-5 cables all the same colour going all over the place ;D

[Zirax]

Now to be fair at home I tended to let things slip.... until I had to rearrange my network.

Now I have the switch, router, cable modem attached to the side of the desk with small green cables signifying the main data paths between them. I haven't gotten round to colour coding the different machines / servers but I can remember what port the server/pc is connected to :

In my new house it will be done properly, how this will be done I have yet to decide.

[Dr. Z]

Heheee, if you did that for me, then I'd be making you do it again :D

One day I might sneak into the apps room with a camera and take some photos of the cabling in there.

LAN, power and audio in one teeny room makes for hell. Oh and there is some lovely Krone in there too. The distances involved make for some interesting cabling - there are two monitors in the studio but VGA isnt good enough over the required distance... so there is a box that splits each individual core of VGA into 15 seperate BNC connections, for 30 coaxial cables to be fed through to the studio and reassembled.

Then there is the audio patch bay, allowing the output from pretty much anything in the whole place to be piped to anywhere else. no small amount of cabling involved there! I might measure the trunks of cable next time I am down there, pretty sure that they come to about 10" thick... none of it labelled.

[Daz]

... none of it labelled.
Pity the poor bastard that ever has top change or troubleshoot that lot!

[Will]

Heh, me and Burble talked about this once - we're both bastards when it comes to cabling! Colour coded, labelled at both ends, and tidy - end of :D

Ditto.

I once made one of our engineers redo it all from scratch - I arrived and it was absolutely dire. I told him, "you didn't do it like I asked you to", he just replied with something like "I presumed this would have been good enough....", I said can you unplug the port-side front serial server for me please - he didn't know which cable it was - that proved my point I think :D

(unfortunately I've had to do it a few times... ah well they'll learn - the hard way ;))

Anyway it was almost shooting myself in the foot as I had to stay there the weekend to make sure everything was working properly - but to his credit he did it, and did it VERY well.

[Stan_Lite]

I'm afraid mine makes Martin's look like a professional job :embarassed:

This is underneath my desk in the living room:

http://www.bigstan.net/Images/Under%20desk%20(Livingroom).jpg

Not too bad, I hear you say? - The next picture is from beside the desk:

http://www.bigstan.net/Images/Beside%20desk.jpg

Next - underneath the desk in my bedroom:

http://www.bigstan.net/Images/Under%20desk%20(Bedroom).jpg

And finally, the two nekkid Folding rigs in the bedroom:

http://www.bigstan.net/Images/Nekkid.jpg

I keep meaning to tidy it all up but it's no small task as I'm sure you'll agree. If I was setting it all up from scratch, it would be a lot tidier but this has been added too as the farm has grown and has now got a bit out of hand.

I've just, this minute, got word that I'm off to Egypt on Sunday so I have 3 days. I may set upon it one of those days and post pics if I get it looking better.

Stan :)

[Haly]

Take out the naked rigs and that's what most of my cable arrangement in Swansea looks like :D
I am planning to sort it though when my room gets revamped, that and hopefully be going wireless for the network which will help.

[Garp]

Mine is a mess in the house around my PC. Too many silly length cables (KVM ones are the biggest mess)

At work I'm anal about cabling, as are the entirety of NOC and the Data Centre manager. If he spots bad cabling the guilty engineer has to arrange down time with the customer so they can re-do it neatly.
My old boss at the college was anal too, all cables neatly run and cable tied together in groups. I could walk into one of the distribution points and follow a cable through from one point to another in under 30 seconds, a very simple case of eyeballing it from one end to the other, with a guiding hand on the cluster of cables.

[Nutcase]

In my old-old job part of the work was to do the original wiring for machines - and they were then removed to make the loom pattern from. So they had to be pukka. The funny thing was the people making the looms (the easy bit) were all ex-marconi wirepersons, and I just dived in and made it up as I went along. VERY VERY rewarding when it all works :cool:

And a flaming nightmare when it all goes pear :embarassed:

[mejinks]

STOPIT!!!! Bad cabling practice makes baby Jesus cry!

When I used to do cabling in C&E, it had to be done to CCN30 Standard, which involved making a note of what switch was connected to what port, the mac address of the pc connected to it, the port number at the desk and the serial number of the cable going from the desk to the wall port and the serial number of the cable going from the switch to the patch panel. There was no unpatching, just disabling of network ports.

Cabling from wall port to desktop - Grey
Cabling from switch to server - Blue
Cabling for telephony - Yellow

Thats the unwritten law! :)

[Garp]

Interesting.. at the college we ran on a few simple rules, at both the main room and at the distribution hubs.

Workstations - Red Cable
Printers - Blue Cables
Crossover cables - Yellow