Cabling Pr0n Makes Me Wirey

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,532
While the "Hurt me plenty" cabling example below is not exactly par for the course, you do have to admire the attention to detail. Pocket-Lint has its 48 obsessively neat photos of cables that belong in a modern art gallery article posted for your viewing pleasure. I know you already have this sitting on your desk in anticipation.

There's a certain breed of IT worker who has a deep fetish for all things neat and tidy. The result is a server room with hundreds of cables neatly organised, cable tied and manipulated into perfect angles. Not only is the outcome aesthetically pleasing, it's also technically practical.
 
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At least there is comfort in seeing the first few that were posted from actual data centers were practically wired. I'll all for keeping the cables straight but any of the ones where someone took the time to make sure that every single wire was stacked exactly the same (thus requiring a zip tie every 3") makes me cringe. Even if you don't ever need to replace those cables for the next 20 years, I probably could have wired 10 jobs in the amount of time it took to wire one of those. We know very well who's getting paid by the hour and who actually has a timeline to finish their work in.
 
I have to agree with bman. I cringe almost as hard for the excessive use of cable ties as I do for the pile of spaghetti approach. Do people never consider that they may need to replace a cable or move equipment? I couldn't possible justify taking that amount of time to do the initial setup, and I sure as hell couldn't tell everyone that a system is going to be down for a day or so while I snip 50 cable ties and re-sculpt cable flows.
 
Some of those are beautiful, but like others have said, not exactly practical. Well, I guess it really depends on the situation. Personally, I like to keep routings nice and clean, and use as little to bind cables together as possible. I want to be able to replace on immediately if needed. Also, giving a little tug to figure out where something is going is about 50x faster than using a cable tester or something like that.

There's a pic in the list that has a ton of some form of interconnect trays (fiber fan-out maybe?) that looks particularly painful for future diagnostics. I'd prefer large bulkhead or patch bays to something like those, even with the space-premium. But then I don't have to work with something quite that large either I guess.
 
So amazing. I need to make that whip for our HelpDesk guys.
 
Pfft, 27 oz. bottle. Amateur. :p

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Cables really don't work very well if you bundle them tightly in a spiral or even fold them tightly.

Everywhere there's a sharp bend, 2x cable dia or tighter, there's a big impedance jump, which degrades the signal.

Adding those is a linear degradation, so the more times it bends, the more it's screwed.

That cat o 9 tails; If it was a GB ethernet cables set, it's not now. :)



And a fiber cable is even worse; have you ever seen a variable attenuator for fiber?

It's a fixture that holds a length of the cable, and bends it back and for a bunch of times; the deeper the bends, the more it attenuates.

Not a feature in a data cable, lol.


Wrapping a cable of any type in a tight spool makes an attenuator at various frequencies; check it out sometime on a network analyzer. :)


As far as Wi-Fi goes, I can't use it at home, because when my place was built in the 50's, they thought it was a good idea to put lead foil in the walls to block dangerous radiation, lol.

I think that foil would just make the walls explode a little harder if a nuke goes off nearby. :)
 
while i admire it, i dont have near the patience for anything anywhere close to that
 
At least there is comfort in seeing the first few that were posted from actual data centers were practically wired. I'll all for keeping the cables straight but any of the ones where someone took the time to make sure that every single wire was stacked exactly the same (thus requiring a zip tie every 3") makes me cringe. Even if you don't ever need to replace those cables for the next 20 years, I probably could have wired 10 jobs in the amount of time it took to wire one of those. We know very well who's getting paid by the hour and who actually has a timeline to finish their work in.

I am not a fan of the zip ties, but wax lacing it is really a lost art. I don't know if any of you have been in a traditional AT&T installed 5E or large switch, but those lacing jobs would set your hair on fire.

I know for a fact that I have worked in one of those facilities, if not two.
 
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