good cabling in real environments [Re: Request for submissions: messy cabling and other broken things]

[Pekka Savola <pekkas () netcore fi>]

On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, John Kinsella wrote:
> Always liked the work my fellow coworkers at Globix used to do - I don't
> have any shots of SJC or NYC online (too bad - a few projects I went to
> alot of trouble on to show the rest how it should be done ;) ), but
> here's one of our demo panels from LHR:
>
> http://thrashyour.com/lhr1-wiringdemo.jpg
>
> And yeah, most of what was under the floors in all the DCs looked like
> that, and yeah I hear for strict cat5 regs that they shouldn't be
> velcroed together like that.  Wire wraps were never used (only velcro),
> bundles are laid down so that shortest is on the bottom side, longest
> on the top.

Now, we've seen a few pics of "good" cabling as well.

However, I'm forced to ask which kind of "good cabling" is possible in 
a dynamic environment when you plug in/out, change, etc. the cables.  
This seems to invariably lead to total chaos :-).

For example, consider the case of a patch panel of 200 plugs, where
you'd have to wire cables to 20 different physical locations (where
the switches/routers are)?  How do you manage that elegantly, at the 
patch panel side and the switch/router side?  :-)

I mean, it's fine if you take 100 cables, and wire them between the
patches and the switches (or the racks if you have the patch
cross-connect there) in bulk, but consider the case where you have 15
different switches (different subnets), a computer moving in/out of
the room in a daily basis etc.  You can't just go around wiring like
http://thrashyour.com/lhr1-wiringdemo.jpg or
http://new.onecall.net/timages/cat5patch.jpg

How do you do good cabling in dynamic, real environments? :-)

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings