Taming a rat’s nest
Because “being the IT guy” is somehow something I still can’t shake (even had someone from another office, who we rent space to, asking me to help her troubleshoot her Windows machine ... sorry, I don’t do Windows, haven’t in ~25 years...)
We have a conference room buried in the building that doesn’t get good WiFI and doesn’t allow in cell signals, not really. I went to add a Netgear Trek N300 travel router to create a hotspot in the room, but ...
There are a half-dozen Ethernet ports but none were connected. So I had the building manager bring in the “wiring guy,” who, well ... 🤬 (Who ignores the existing patch panel and just leaves a keystone hanging?!)
Anyway. That’s when I realized we had no spare port to connect the new Ethernet jack to. Sigh. None of this is enterprise-grade, but, it is what it is.
Cable Modem -> Netgear WNDR3400v2 router connected to a switch in the wiring closet for the sublet “suite,” and now, our shiny new Netgear GS316 16-Port Gigabit Ethernet Unmanaged Switch.
As I reconnected everything, I realized what a mess we have. I used a Klein VDV526-100 to track which patch panel location connects to what wall drop, and I’m going to replace the too-short or too-long patch cables and label them with these Mr-Label Self-Laminating Wrap Around Cable Labels. Also, of course, reusable zip ties.
The color scheme I’m using (since it was already pretty much in place):
- Yellow, for infrastructure interconnects (modem to router, router to switch)
- Blue, for direct device connection (Ricoh laser, Dell server, Raspberry Pi VPN end point)
- Black, for a wall drop patch
Where we started:
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