--- streiner@cluebyfour.org wrote: -------------
Note that telcos are not immune to shoddy cabling/installation work.
<snip> http://www.cluebyfour.org/~streiner/mbr-pop-2000-ladder.JPG
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Do that at the telco in Hawaii and you won't be working here very long. The installation work and wiring here is something to swoon over.
One of the stranger things a field tech of ours encountered wasn't necessarily bad wiring (although it's not great), but the fact that the demarc was located next to the toilet in the bathroom. Naturally, the constant humidity caused bad corrosion problems and other issues with their telco services. So as a general rule of thumb, avoid putting your telco and/or network gear next to the crapper or the services the equipment is meant to provide might also stink.
Nice - they even wrapped the fiber to keep the wax twine from pinching it.
Some of the telcos around here do (or did) very clean wiring jobs like this. The AT&T Local (TCG from way back in the day) guys who put the OC48 bay and related breakouts for T1s and DS3s did very neat wiring.
Some of the local old-school Bell Atlantic/Verizon techs also did very clean work, but most of them took the early retirement packages that were offered 4-5 years ago.
This (the general subject of how to keep real-world cabinets tidy and do cabling in a sane way) seems like an excellent topic for a NANOG tutorial. I'd come, for sure
When I worked on the ISP side of a phone company in New Zealand in the early nineties the telco facilities techs did some beautiful work, particularly on some very large copper distribution frames (for strange regulatory reasons there was one very large class 5 switch at this telco to service local access customers all over Auckland, with result that almost the whole first floor of 49 Symonds Street was built out as an enormous CO).
I once asked one of the telco guys to come and impart some cable management clue to us, but didn't get very far. The bemused response when we were both standing in front of the ISP racks was "but this is IT gear. IT gear is always messy."
This is a topic that I am quite interested in. I have no telco
background, but got started in a shop on par with many of these
photos. Around my current job, I'm the guy who is known for
whining about crappy cabling jobs.
Does anyone know if any good resources on best-practices at this sort
of thing? I'm pretty sure that others must've already figured out the
trickier stuff that I've thought about.
For example - some of the posted pictures show the use of fiber ducts
lifted above cable ladders. Why opt for such a two-level design
instead of bundling fibers in flex-conduit and running the conduits
adjacent on the ladder?
Does anyone know if any good resources on best-practices at this sort
of thing? I'm pretty sure that others must've already figured out the
trickier stuff that I've thought about.
Most good cabling jobs require one thing- dedication.
If you are willing to put in the time and effort, you can do a good cabling job the first time. Think about how the cables will get used, what might change in the future, and then lay them out so as to minimize problems when things need to be moved or upgraded.
Then again, sometimes it requires a whole lot more dedication. In our case the racks we inherited were installed wrong (no space between them for vertical cable management). Getting our cabling organized meant welding our own cable management brackets that we could bolt onto the front of the racks.
Then again, sometimes it requires a whole lot more dedication. In our case the racks we inherited were installed wrong (no space between them for vertical cable management). Getting our cabling organized meant welding our own cable management brackets that we could bolt onto the front of the racks.
Nothing like some good old fashioned arc welding next to your $100k router. Wonder how you explain the scorch marks on the mounting bracket to support for an RMA
Please read what I wrote:
"brackets that we could _BOLT_ onto the front of the racks"
No where, in any way shape or form, did I say or imply, that we were welding above, below, next to, or anywhere near our routers. I said we welded up cable management brackets that we then bolted on to our racks.
> This (the general subject of how to keep real-world cabinets tidy and
> do cabling in a sane way) seems like an excellent topic for a NANOG
> tutorial. I'd come, for sure
This is a topic that I am quite interested in. I have no telco
background, but got started in a shop on par with many of these
photos. Around my current job, I'm the guy who is known for
whining about crappy cabling jobs.
Does anyone know if any good resources on best-practices at this sort
of thing? I'm pretty sure that others must've already figured out the
trickier stuff that I've thought about.
Telcordia. There are age old standards that are related to CO
construction and service delivery. In most non ILEC facilities,
Bellcore/Telcordia standards are hybrid. Two of the best hybrid
implementations I've worked with are Level(3) and MCI.
For example - some of the posted pictures show the use of fiber ducts
lifted above cable ladders. Why opt for such a two-level design
instead of bundling fibers in flex-conduit and running the conduits
adjacent on the ladder?
I'm not sure what you mean. If you are talking about ladder separation
and fiber trough, there are multiple, solid, engineering reasons. The
optical trough is used so that you don't need to touch bundle and
potentially cause an larger outage with damage. The trough allows fast
service delivery of xcons as well. Third tier bundle is used as
simple a path route, never to be modified, generally a route from the
OSP/ISP termination to splice shelving.
If you have access to Level(3) facilities, walk around a bit and look.
IMHO, they have the ultimate hybrid CO/datacenter hybrid design.
The installation work and wiring here is something to swoon over.
So as a general rule of thumb, avoid putting your telco and/or network gear next to the crapper or the services the equipment is meant to provide might also stink.
