Any server room guys here? We're moving into one of your old buildings. What are these cables?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Any server room guys here? We're moving into one of your old buildings. What are these cables?

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b0rg

94 posts

Master Geek

#1723703 21-Feb-2017 13:31

Yeah we think we may need to use them.

They left their old network diagram and it looks like it was 95% phone lines, so I believe those 4 pair cables were doing 4 lines at a time, x 57 cables, = ~200 patches - more patches than phone lines and internet circuits listed.

This makes sense since we were told there was no fiber to the site, just a DSL circuit- that sounded weird but with no internet patched up for most desks, it makes sense. Maybe they were getting internet from another office but I don't see any patching for it.. very weird. What would they do without a good internet connection, and why do they have such a nice well equipped server room with expensive patching, hundreds of ports patched, etc?

Anyway, we're going to do some testing and see if we can break the connection between two machines by wiggling cables etc. Thanks so much guys, you've been very helpful and I really appreciate it.

Wibbleman

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1723845 21-Feb-2017 16:02

b0rg:

Yeah we think we may need to use them.

They left their old network diagram and it looks like it was 95% phone lines, so I believe those 4 pair cables were doing 4 lines at a time, x 57 cables, = ~200 patches - more patches than phone lines and internet circuits listed.

This makes sense since we were told there was no fiber to the site, just a DSL circuit- that sounded weird but with no internet patched up for most desks, it makes sense. Maybe they were getting internet from another office but I don't see any patching for it.. very weird. What would they do without a good internet connection, and why do they have such a nice well equipped server room with expensive patching, hundreds of ports patched, etc?

Anyway, we're going to do some testing and see if we can break the connection between two machines by wiggling cables etc. Thanks so much guys, you've been very helpful and I really appreciate it.

Which building is this? While I can't tell you specifics of how the network worked, but in simplistic terms there would have been a WAN circuit feeding into a router, that would connect to a switch (either chassis or stack which would be connected to one side of that panel and the users pcs would have been patched accross) and the users would get internet via that wan link (ie like a pretty much bog standard WAN setup). Most phones would have been ip-phones with the PC's daisychained behind them. So I would guess those network diagrams are old, or are of some office I haven't seen before.

Also punching down cables is very quick once you have done a few of them, in the realm of maybe 30s to do each end. So if that's too hard, then get a cable contractor in to do it for you. And then on your moves (which shouldn't require repatching if its just people swapping desks,as you just change the vlans on their switchports)are only 5 minutes once a week (at 50 moves a year) so not a huge load.

And all of the other Spark Visipatch boards I have seen have approx 80% of the cables punched down nice and tidy, i would have expected that one to be the same.

b0rg

94 posts

Master Geek

#1723945 21-Feb-2017 17:27

Wibbleman:

b0rg:

Yeah we think we may need to use them.

They left their old network diagram and it looks like it was 95% phone lines, so I believe those 4 pair cables were doing 4 lines at a time, x 57 cables, = ~200 patches - more patches than phone lines and internet circuits listed.

This makes sense since we were told there was no fiber to the site, just a DSL circuit- that sounded weird but with no internet patched up for most desks, it makes sense. Maybe they were getting internet from another office but I don't see any patching for it.. very weird. What would they do without a good internet connection, and why do they have such a nice well equipped server room with expensive patching, hundreds of ports patched, etc?

Anyway, we're going to do some testing and see if we can break the connection between two machines by wiggling cables etc. Thanks so much guys, you've been very helpful and I really appreciate it.

Which building is this? While I can't tell you specifics of how the network worked, but in simplistic terms there would have been a WAN circuit feeding into a router, that would connect to a switch (either chassis or stack which would be connected to one side of that panel and the users pcs would have been patched accross) and the users would get internet via that wan link (ie like a pretty much bog standard WAN setup). Most phones would have been ip-phones with the PC's daisychained behind them. So I would guess those network diagrams are old, or are of some office I haven't seen before.

Also punching down cables is very quick once you have done a few of them, in the realm of maybe 30s to do each end. So if that's too hard, then get a cable contractor in to do it for you. And then on your moves (which shouldn't require repatching if its just people swapping desks,as you just change the vlans on their switchports)are only 5 minutes once a week (at 50 moves a year) so not a huge load.

And all of the other Spark Visipatch boards I have seen have approx 80% of the cables punched down nice and tidy, i would have expected that one to be the same.

I've taken another look just now, and hallelujah, they do appear to be mostly punched already! All the ports are labelled and can be traced back to the VisiPatch board on one side.

From speaking with some distributors for those cables, they advise to do the punching on the back for (a) patching ports (which is done) and for (b) cabling to the switches in the rack (also done), then use the grey cables (pic attached in first post) to link VisiPatch ports (a) to Visipatch ports (b).

This appears to be how Spark were using it, and how the Visipatch vendors intended. There is no way we can see to connect the Visipatch panels that are hardwired to the ports, to the Visipatch panels hardwired to looms of cables dangling in the now empty server racks, without using those grey leads that are custom made for the purpose.

Also, the number of cables is almost exactly what is needed to patch up the phone lines in the diagram they left behind.

I believe we are sorted... thanks all for your help. Would have been difficult without all the little bits of information I picked up here!

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