Thursday 5 July 2007

Ever tried to find the wire you want in a sprawling tangle of wires? If so you will know how frustrating this is having to follow a wire through a spaghetti junction to find out what connection it’s plugged into.


The wiring in the server room at work is such a mess that you have to trace each wire to make sure it’s the correct wire you are looking for and even when you do find the correct one replacing it with another is a nightmare having to pull it out via a tangle of other cables. This isn’t easy at the best of times but if you’re not using snag less cables you will no doubt be left wanting to throw a set of switches through the nearest window.


I’m not sure if there is a set of standards for cables and wires but I defiantly think there should be this would make it much easier to find and replace cables.

When I started wiring up the new switches at work we have all decided that each set of wires needs to follow a set of standards. These are:

  • All cables are to be snag less
  • Start and end of cables label with where it connects to
  • Cables label at meter interval down there length
  • Cables are to be colour co-ordinated (Green LAN, Purple server etc.)
  • Groups of cables should be cable tied together.
  • As much cabling as possible to be hidden away.


OK so this sort of cabling takes much longer to set up, I spent a good few hour yesterday labelling and tying up cables but it will make the whole system much better at the end of the day. Everyone will be able to see where each cable goes and not worry about unplugging an incorrect cable and crashing the system.

I definatly think we will see the benefit of this in the long run.

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