Pristine network wiring

[Underseer]

I've always had jobs at small to medium organizations, so I've never had networking equipment that looks like this. Inevtibably, something goes wrong and you have to start yanking out cables and whatever I do to try and make things look pretty eventually gets ruined in the name of expediency.

That cable needs to be swapped, and I got other things to do, so my networking equipment and servers end up looking sloppy.

Anyway, for the other techs, what have your experiences been like? Do you manage to keep things looking this good, or does your network room look like a rat's nest after a tornado? Is it really worthwhile to make everything look this pretty?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, I can't imagine wiring this neat unless you're in a basically static situation or you have enough money to way overprovision the system so nothing needs to be done to the networking when needs change.

 

[Angry Floof]

Looks like the work of NASA or something.

 

[thebeave]

I don't work in IT, but do a fair amount of household electrical wiring in switch and outlet boxes. It really pays to spend the time to dress up your wires neatly when there are a lot of wires to cram in a small box.

Reminds of this picture I came across a while back, and was fascinated by it. Not wire, but pipes. Can't decide whether its pure genius or retard:

 

[Treedbear]

...
Anyway, for the other techs, what have your experiences been like? Do you manage to keep things looking this good, or does your network room look like a rat's nest after a tornado? Is it really worthwhile to make everything look this pretty?

It's good practice to make it neat and orderly next to the connector panel. But somewhere nearby (usually in the subfloor under the elevated floor panels) there needs to be service loops in case those just-the-right-length cables need to be swapped around or a connector needs to be replaced. The subfloor cabling is not for the faint of heart.

 

[Underseer]

...
Anyway, for the other techs, what have your experiences been like? Do you manage to keep things looking this good, or does your network room look like a rat's nest after a tornado? Is it really worthwhile to make everything look this pretty?

It's good practice to make it neat and orderly next to the connector panel. But somewhere nearby (usually in the subfloor under the elevated floor panels) there needs to be service loops in case those just-the-right-length cables need to be swapped around or a connector needs to be replaced. The subfloor cabling is not for the faint of heart.

It sounds like they're just shifting the problem somewhere else, then.

And couldn't the excess wire be in orderly loops arranged to spell out poems in cursive or something? Anyone willing to do what is in the above picture would surely be neurotic enough for such a thing.

 

[LordKiran]

I don't work in IT, but do a fair amount of household electrical wiring in switch and outlet boxes. It really pays to spend the time to dress up your wires neatly when there are a lot of wires to cram in a small box.

Reminds of this picture I came across a while back, and was fascinated by it. Not wire, but pipes. Can't decide whether its pure genius or retard:

View attachment 15041

Short term brilliance and long term retardation.

 

[James Brown]

...
Anyway, for the other techs, what have your experiences been like? Do you manage to keep things looking this good, or does your network room look like a rat's nest after a tornado? Is it really worthwhile to make everything look this pretty?

It's good practice to make it neat and orderly next to the connector panel. But somewhere nearby (usually in the subfloor under the elevated floor panels) there needs to be service loops in case those just-the-right-length cables need to be swapped around or a connector needs to be replaced. The subfloor cabling is not for the faint of heart.

That's not quite a big a problem when cables can be made to length in short order. Need a six-and-a-half foot cable? Be back in five minutes.

It's when all you have is a drawer of six-foot cables to work with that spaghetti specials begin to develop.

Keeping cabling neat is also much more difficult in production environments when you dasn't even imagine unplugging one, even for a second, lest the wrath of management be heaped upon your head.

 

[ZiprHead]

I went to a clients office who was having network printer issues. Usually their software system (pharmacy) takes care of their system but that takes time and huge money (I work cheap). He showed me underneath the work counter the cabling. It was a pile about three feet wide and about a foot deep of all kinds of cables, power, network, local printer, etc. Nope, nope nope.

 

[Bronzeage]

I think a lot of blue cable clusterfucks I've seen, go back to cables which come with factory connectors on each end. You can either cut the cable to size or pull all the slack to one end of the run and let it lay on the floor. Doing a neat job means cutting the cable installing a new end. This takes more time and introduces a new possible fault. It's faster and more reliable to pile all the slack in the equipment room.

The real reason equipment rooms become blue cable hell is, the whole thing was put together by a contractor who never expects to see any of this stuff, ever again.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

...
Anyway, for the other techs, what have your experiences been like? Do you manage to keep things looking this good, or does your network room look like a rat's nest after a tornado? Is it really worthwhile to make everything look this pretty?

It's good practice to make it neat and orderly next to the connector panel. But somewhere nearby (usually in the subfloor under the elevated floor panels) there needs to be service loops in case those just-the-right-length cables need to be swapped around or a connector needs to be replaced. The subfloor cabling is not for the faint of heart.

Yeah, you can hide the mess. You can't get rid of it.

 

[Underseer]

I went to a clients office who was having network printer issues. Usually their software system (pharmacy) takes care of their system but that takes time and huge money (I work cheap). He showed me underneath the work counter the cabling. It was a pile about three feet wide and about a foot deep of all kinds of cables, power, network, local printer, etc. Nope, nope nope.

Pix or it didn't happen.

 

[Underseer]

I've never had any rack look like this nor anything remotely like this.