Cable Labeling

It is very important to give labels to your cables. Labels make your network troubleshooting less painful. In case of problem, you don't want to trace every cable end to end.

Each end of cable should be labeled, the label should give information about where the cable is connected to.
It is really up to you or your company policy how the description format of the labels should be written.

The most important thing is to keep the writings not too long, and easy to be interpreted. For example, I have a fiber optic cable at the IDF going to the MDF, I like to name it like this:

for the IDF cable: MDF_Core1_23 -> it tells that the cable is going to the MDF Core Switch 1 at port 23.
for the MDF cable: IDF_2Fl_1_1 -> it tells that the cable is going to the IDF at second floor, switch 1 and port1.

Well I suggest try designing your own labeling scheme and don't forget to write it down and give the description to fellow network installers and the project owner.

You can use many tools for your labeling, there are many tools to make your labeling easier, some tools will keep track on your labels and generate the next label automatically while some tools require us to input the label writing manually.
Below is a variety of tools you can use for your labeling purpose, you can find a lot of tools available at my favorite site http://www.cableorganizer.com.

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Planning for Wireless Network

If you're planning to deploy wireless access points in a networking project then I congrats you, you still have lots of works to be done before you get to configuring the access points .

There are lots of things to consider if you're in a networking project, the location of the access points, channels to use, are there radio interferences in the locations, etc.

You need to do wireless site survey in a network project, see they even created their own science for this work.

To talk about wireless site survey could take its own blogs, books, tools and even specialized certification if you want to do it properly and professionally.
The tools software and hardware don't come in cheap I'm telling you.

There are softwares that can do wireless site survey, they can visually show you the range of access points that are installed in the site. Few that I've seen in work before are from ekahau and visiwave.

On the top of this post is the sample report from visiwave and the left picture here is from ekahau.

These pictures show you the range of the wireless access points on site. They're kinda like heat meter or something. With these you can then determine the best placement for the access points that can reach all clients.

From my experience not all of these softwares work with your wireless cards, so keep in mind before purchasing these softwares, do they support your wireless cards or not.

There also hardwares that can help you do the site survey and these hardwares can also scan for radio interferences such as that come from oven microwave, cordless phones, etc.
You got to check on yellowjacket from bvssystem, these things are cool.

The people in bvssystem integrates HP iPaq PDA with their yellowjacket to be used as wireless site survey tool.
This one is in the form of Tablet PC for spectrum analysis:

Both softwares and hardwares can provide you with detailed reports of the wireless site survey result.

Now that's when you're working in a network project, if you want to deploy wireless access points in your home or SOHO, you don't need to do all that troubles.

Next post I want to talk about the things to consider if you want to install wireless access points in your home or SOHO.

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How To Terminate UTP Cable to Toolless Modular Jack

Last post I talked about how to terminate to Modular Jack, it was not hard at all right? There are also modular jacks type that are toolless.
The toolless jacks allow you to terminate UTP cable without the punch down impact tool, though you still have to use cable stripper and scissor, so they're not exactly toolless.

The one that I once tried using before was the one from AMP, lets see if they really cut down the time in terminating the cables.

The tools you need is exactly the same when terminating to regular jacks, but you can exclude the punch down impact tool and add a cutting tools like scissor or cutter.
Here are the steps:

Step One:

Still same with the regular jacks, strip the cable jacket and untwist the cables.

Step Two:

Insert the cables to the holes according to the color codes printed on the jack

 

Now this process takes a little bit more time if this is your first time terminating cables to toolless jacks.

Step Three:

Cut the excess cables using scissor or cutter, it would be easier to use technician scissor.

Make sure you cut them in even length.

Step Four:

Close the cover using your hand, this is quite hard, just close it until you're sure it's firmly closed, and attach the jack to the wall face plate.

 

There you have it, toolless modular jack termination.

In my opinion, I prefer to use the regular jack instead of the toolless ones, I'm more used to terminate to the regular ones and for me, it's harder to arrange the cables in the toolless jacks.

Then again it's up to you to choose, in term of price, the regular and the toolless jacks are not too much different, but the punch down impact tools do cost some good amount of money.

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How To Terminate UTP cable to Modular Jack

It's easy to do your own home networking, if you want to run your cables in your walls you're going to need the tools shown in the left picture.

Of course for the cable you need to run it down first in your walls, I only use that short cable for this tutorial.

Words of note, do not cut your cables too short when terminating them to the modular jacks. In case you need to change the jacks later or you terminate them wrong then you don't have to worry having too short cables.

Step One:

Strip your cable jacket using the cable stripper.








Step Two:

Prepare your modular jack, you can see the jack has printed color codes for terminating the UTP cable. It is really up to you which color codes you choose for terminating the cables, the important thing is to keep it uniform in your project.

Personally I like to use the T568B color codes for my projects.

Step Three:

Position your cable and the jack like the following position, and arrange the cables according to the color codes you'd like to use.

 

Step Four:

Now it's time to use the Punch Down Impact Tool, if you look closely at the tool, you'd see different tips at it, you have to remember to position the sharp tip on the outer side of the jack.

This tool has two functions, first it push the cables in to the slots on the jack, and the sharp tip is used to cut the excess cables.

As its name, the tool would have an impact when used, so you might want to put the jack on the floor and put something beneath it like carton or anything else to reduce the impact of the tool.

In a project where you have to terminate many jacks, it would just hurt your hand or back to terminate these things, you can use tools such as this EZ Grip Puck.






On the left is the result when you finish using the punch down impact tool.

Note:
This is not recommended but if you don't have impact tools, you can use anything that has slim shape to insert cables into the slots of the jack and then you can use scissors or cutters to cut the excess cables.

Step Five: 

Prepare your wallplate, you can see on the backside of it, it has a place where you can plug your jack.

 

Insert your jack at the area shown in the picture above, be careful if you put the jack wrong, you cant insert the cable for your computers in it. Make sure you position the jack as the following pictures:

 

Happy trying.

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Cable Testing and Certification

Without any doubt, the first thing you do after you finish crimping your cables is to test them.
You can test them by plugging them to your NIC and see if they work, or you can use one of these LAN tester like the one I show you on the left picture.

They are easy to use, and a must have for network installers. But the one I show you is just for home usage or not intended for heavy usage.
What I mean is these LAN tester are used only to test whether you use the right color codes, to find out if there any cable cut in the middle, and some other basic things.

There are other tester type, the Tone Generator. These devices are useful if you have so many cables in your network but you didn't properly labeled them.

If you didn't label your cables properly, at some points if there's a problem on a cable you won't know which cable to check on.

What you can do is plug one end with the tone generator - the one with cables sticking out from it - this generator will send a signal through your cable.

Then you go to the other end of the cable, say, in the IDF room. There are plenty of cables there. You don't know which cable is connected to the end connected with your tone generator.

Here you grab the other tool, the one with pencil shaped and has some speaker in it. You just point the tip of the tool and when the sounds get clearer, then you know which cable you're searching for. Cool.

If you are involved in a big network project, you definitely want your hands on some more advanced testers. In a project, you are required to do cable certification on each cable you installed.
What I mean by certification is not some exam test or anything, but you must provide proof that the cables you installed are properly working without any defect.

The only tools that I can think of for cable certifications are the ones from Fluke. These tools are awesome, but they cost a fortune.

With these tools you can do any testing you can think of on a cable, you can see which wiring scheme you used on them, are there any crosstalk, if there's a cable cut in the middle you can find at what distance the cable is cut, etc.

One time I saw a cable certifier do their job. They certified on every cable we installed. One person in the IDF room and another in the work area. With the fluke plugged on each end, they can verify the cable and listen to this, they actually can talk to each other using the fluke device despite they are far apart!!!
Wow, they use the network cables as communication media, awesome.

You can generate report on each cable you tested, this report is the one you use as cable certification.
In a project you can have thousands of pages just for certifications. Usually one page represents certification for one cable you installed.

There are many parameters that you can see in a cable certification, the length of the cable, the wiring scheme, whether the cable passed the testing done by the tester, etc.
Here I show you a minimal report on a cable certification:

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Managing Cables in Racks

You typically find bulks of cables like the left picture shows in a project. It's not strange to have a project with 2000 clients to be connected in a network.

To arrange cables like these is a nightmare for network installers if you don't provide yourselves with cable managers.

Usually the cable managers also provided by the racks vendors. You can ask them if they have it, or use cable managers from other vendors if you don't like the way it looks.

Different cable managers have different ways to manage cables, so it's better to consult the vendors on how to install the cables according their products.

I need to remind you that some cable managers make the look of your racks neater but if you don't install them accordingly, they will make your future improvement harder. What I mean is that you have to design also how the cables run inside your rack should be. You don't want the outer look of your rack looks neat while you have spaghetti cables inside.

This is how one of the cable manager from ADC Krone looks like

And me and my team manage to make the upper picture look like this

Well it looks better then the last picture at least.
Like I said vendors develop their own cable managers, another example is from Systimax down here

The vendors  even develop many cable managers for desktop computers/end users. You can find many of them out there, so, start browse for cable managers to manage your cabling, don't let the cables to be an eyesore.

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Cabling in MDF Room

Just want to share my experience when I worked on cabling in MDF room. I shouldn't show you the networking devices that the company use but since they replaced the devices some time ago, I'm free to share the pictures with you.

The company use fiber optic cables as their backbone, connecting the devices in the MDF room to the IDF rooms located on each floor of the building. One floor has 2 IDF rooms, there are total of 22 Floors in the building.

The fibers then terminated on what is called Fiber Distribution Frame (FDF), it's basically the same with patch panels for UTP cables.

The above picture shows how messy the cables are, we had to put labels first and arrange them based on floors they're coming. The orange cables are the fiber patch cords, they are pre-terminated cables that have more reliability then when terminated on-site. The pre-terminated cables are certified first by the vendors that made them.

We tied the cables using velcro cable ties, because we have to be more delicate in handling the fibers. Too much pressure on the cables and who knows what will happen to the fibers inside them.
After arranging the cables, most FDFs have enclosure to keep the cables from outside interference, so we close the FDF to make them neater also.

 

This is where the fiber patch cords are connected to, Cisco Catalyst 6509 for the Core Switches (there are two of them in the MDF room).

Next is to enjoy ourselves for quite nice job, me and my team.

 

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The Coolest Networking Device I've Ever Seen

I found these pictures in my laptop, I remember one day I was checking on things on the project site then I saw this large amounts of racks, most of them from DELL.
Some other contractors must have installed them I think, so I took a peek and found this cool device.

I'm saying its cool not because of the features, I haven't got a chance to work using it, I just look at the look of it. Later I browsed at the internet and found out that it is some kind of a management system for servers and storage systems.

It is placed in the server racks, all are DELL's. No body around so I opened the rack and pulled it out.

 Ain't that cool or what???

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Color Codes for Terminating UTP Cat5e 25 Pairs

Aside from UTP cable 4 pairs, we also have 25 pairs UTP cables and even more than 2400 pairs of UTP cable.
Usually, the 25 pairs UTP cables are terminated to 110 blocks, 66 blocks, etc using a Punch Down Tool.

There is a wiring scheme that you must follow to terminate the 25 pairs UTP cables.
Here is the wiring scheme color codes:

You can see from table all cable pairs from the pair 1 to pair 25. Here's how to read the table:

In 25 pairs UTP cable, you have 5 group of paired cables. Each group has 5 basic colors, Blue, Orange, Green, Brown, Grey (Slate). Each cable twisted with the same group color (e.g. first group is white, second group is red, and so on).

You can see on the top picture how the 25 pairs UTP cables are terminated according to the color scheme.


Cables that have larger than 25 pairs are group per 25 pairs. The first group should have a binder ribbon with White/Blue color, the second group have a White/Orange binder, and so on.


Unless you're working on a major project, you will see the 25 pairs UTP cables are commonly used in projects.

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Color Codes for Terminating UTP Cat5e 4 Pairs

The picture you see on the left is UTP Cat5e 4 pairs cable. You can see the basic colors Orange, Blue, Green, and Brown. Each are twisted with white cable strips with the matching color (e.g. white/orange, white/blue, and so on). Sometimes there are cables with no strips, only white color.

There are wiring standards that you must follow, the T568A and T568B. If you're installing cables on a new network you should always follow these standards, you can use a standard of your own in the older projects as long as other cables are using that standard also.

Here are the T568B andd T568B wiring scheme:

There is a reason why I show this T568B wiring scheme first, I have my own way to remember which cable should go where.
First I remember the pairs of cables, first cable should be:
   1. White/Orange and Orange
   2. White/Blue and Blue
   3. White/Green and Green
   4. White/Brown and Brown
After that I like to remember using numbers, I change the 3rd cable with the 5th cable. There you have it, T568B wiring scheme.
You can remember the cables the way you like.

The next one is T568A wiring scheme. After I arrange the cables as the T568B standard, again I like to use numbers to remember the scheme:

I switch the 1st cable with the 3rd cable.
And then switch the 2nd cable with the 6th cable.

This is only the way I like to remember the wiring scheme, you can use whatever method you prefer.

Next I want to tell you about the Straight-Through cable and the Crossover cable.

If you want to connect two different networking devices such as router-switch or switch-computer you should use the Straight-Through Cable.
One exception is that you should use the Crossover cable to connect router-computer. Why? because router and computer belong to the same level on OSI Layer, I'll talk about OSI layer some other time.

Now Straight-Through cable is a cable with the same scheme on both ends. For example, you use the T568B on one end and the same with the other end, then you'll have a straight-through cable.
Some people debate that you should use T568A for straight-through cable and some people say to use T568B.
If you ask me, it doesn't matter which scheme you used as long you keep it constant in your project.

Next the Crossover cable is a cable with different wiring scheme on both ends, one end use T568A and the other end use T568B.

The more modern networking devices have the ability called Auto MDI/MDIX, this means they can detect what wiring scheme you use, and you can use whatever wiring scheme to connect two different devices.
But just to be save, just follow the standard wiring schemes.

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