May 09, 2008
How to do it
Today Doug Wingo and I fixed the LAN over at LA05. I don't know who did it, if I did I'd be complaining to them (if OCS) or filing a grievance for non-OCS touching our stuff. I suspect someone "helping" from the Valley OCS crew as it looks to have been done over the course of at least three visits.
As noted on the Last Entry I was called in on a port trouble. It was far more than that.
The design showed Ethernet switch 1 in TE1.1 and switch 2 in TE1.2 -- don't ask how, but they were reversed. Rather than "correct" the design, it is alot better to correct the build to match Standards, so I did. Started the day by disconnecting Sw1, carrying it over to TE1.1 and installing it in place of Sw2, which went into TE1.2 where it belonged. Connected all the cables to the correct ports in TE1.1, procede to the 1.2.....
Pull the hacked patch cables and toss them into the trash where they belong. Found two plugs in the Switch that were assembled -- poorly, the cable sheath was not into the modular plug. They were on the ends of FLOOR cables. One was part of a quad-4 that had the other three cables properly terminated on the patch panel. The red jack had had it's cable cut from the jack! WHY? All I can figure is whoever did it didn't have a patch cable but did have a crimping tool. ARRGH!!! Corrected.
When I swung the gate open to get to the back of the patch panels I found that whatever idiot put the voice cables in didn't run the cables to the hinge end. Just straight up so that the swing gate can no longer swing more than a few inches. That needs to be corrected Monday.
The second crimped on plug was part of a quad-4 that did not have a patch panel appearance -- just plugs on the red and white plugged into the Switch and into a voice jack. The cable ran about eight feet to disappear into a hole punched through the wall, presumably to the locked office on the other side of the wall. With all eight feet wrapped in black plastic tape. Asked client to unlock, told that the office has been vacant for a year. Ripped quad out.
Patched the ten LAN connections back to the "phone" bar. Ran eight dial tones onto the last two cat-5 cables (acceptable, just don't mix Ethernet and Analog on the same cat-5 cable!) and provided eight jacks at the phone bar end.
Have to return Monday to replace the hacked double jacks with single LAN jacks, and a pair of quad jacks for the dialtones, marked with which phone number is on which jack.
Not as good as it could be, but at least it meets my admittedly low standards.
Posted by Paladin at May 9, 2008 09:08 PM