Author Profile - Tony Fortunato is a Senior Network Specialist with experience in design, implementation, and troubleshooting of LAN/WAN/Wireless networks, desktops and servers since 1989. His background in financial networks includes design and implementation of trading floor networks. Tony has taught at local high schools, Colleges/Universities, Networld/Interop and many onsite private classroom settings to thousands of analysts. Tony is an authorized and certified Fluke Networks and Wireshark Instructor. His Pine Mountain Group CNA Level I and II certification demonstrates his vendor neutral approach to network design, support and implementations. Tony has architected, installed and supported various types of Residential Wireless High Speed as well as hundreds of WIFI hotspots. Tony uses a variety of technologies from Powerline, Wireless and wired technologies to find the most cost-efficient and reliable solution for his customers. Tony combines custom programs, open source and commercial software to ensure a simple support infrastructure.
Now that most of the 'non-essential equipment' is disconnected, I continue to physically remove equipment and all the cables that are not connected to anything.
I love it when I see telephone or Network cables coiled around an outlet, or in one customer's case, an arc-welder. One question; WHY??!?!?!!!
Some of the more common things I run into that I want to share with you is this strange urge for analysts to use several short Ethernet cables, joined via an Ethernet coupler. I always hear people during installs or troubleshooting promising to 'come back and replace it'. yeah, right...
You can see in this example that this was not intended as a temporary fix since they took the time to wrap electrical tape around it. I found about a dozen of these connections. So I simply determined the proper length cable, ran new ones, and scheduled a maintenance window to replace the cables. Done.
Then its off to fix all the 'home made' Ethernet connections that are literally falling apart. As you can see the jacket has slid out of the RJ45. Here's a first for me; someone used some RJ12's for their network connections. When I asked where these drops went the technician replied "Don't worry about those, we could never get those drops to work" to which I replied, "Do you think???". I re-crimped the RJ45's (man, I hate doing that) as well as removing the RJ12's.
My next step is to label any cables that we can easily determine their connection points. I start from the switch and work back since, "all roads lead to Rome". For example, one end would be labeled "switch 1, port 12" and the other end would be labeled "Data Jack 23". We were fortunate to have a student help out. This is pretty time consuming, but, trust me, you will find all sorts of things to cleanup along the way. This also makes any moves that you will plan in the future more easier. I don't know about you, but after a while, everything becomes a blur and its very easy to move a cable and not connect it back to the original port. Make sure you have a pen and notepad, so you don't forget any additional things you find along the way.
Now that I know what is connected to what, I can try to remove more equipment, like this Cisco switch with only 2 connections. After reviewing the configurations and noting that only one connection had a link light, I could free this switch up.
I'm getting there... bit by bit ;b
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