On Mon, 07 Aug 2006 11:03:46 -0400, Martin K wrote:
>> Isn't it just great when they use the same coloured wire
>> everywhere ....
>>
>> Trouble is the wire in the other colours is just so much more
>> expensive ...
>>
>>
> They made it bright yellow so you could find which one you wanted
> easily.

On the surface the photos are easy to poke fun at but in reality no
network closet I've ever worked on with a large amount of connections
(say >100) looked any different.

Once you get past a few dozen cables, making them different colors
doesn't help much. You just end up with a few dozen red, blue,
yellow, green, grey, etc. cables all mixed together. And adding
labels to them just makes them hard to pull and route through the
cable looms or bundles. Labeled cables are also problematic when
replaced later (and they do get replaced from time to time).

The best solution I've seen (and use) is to make a routing/connection
chart that includes "FROM" and "TO" connections in tabular form. It's
just like a wire list for any other cabling system and allows you to
quickly find out where any one cable is supposed to be connected. You
can make them in Excel with very little trouble and it allows then to
be searchable and printable in a nice format for hard copy
documentation.

If you have such a cable routing document you can quickly pinpoint
where any one cable is routed From/To should you need to replace it
or change it's routing. Of course this all falls apart if you don't
update the documentation when you make changes or you didn't do it in
the first place ...

Matt Pobursky
Maximum Performance Systems


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