Structuring the Structured Cabling

We talked about structured cabling and its several offerings many times in

our magazine. This time we are going to talk about something different - how to

efficiently plan and troubleshoot structured cabling. This component of our

network is silently hidden behind the walls, but a majority of network troubles

and downtime is caused by faulty cables and patch panels, patch cords, etc. As

these are hidden and jumbled up across the space, spotting errors in them,

identifying and pinpointing problems is a nightmare for Network Admins.

Let's discuss some dominant technologies and applications which can help plan

your cabling better, identify and fix errors.

Planning your structured Cabling



Planning a structured cabling deployment or its updation is a very technical

task and requires years of experience. The trouble increases with the size of

the network and types of applications one is going to use on that network. Plus

if it's about upgrading your setup in a pre deployed environment, things becomes

even more tedious. Believe it or not, there are some CAD applications which are

specific for designing structured cabling. One such software is CableProject

CAD. Some key features of this application are that you can predict the actual

costing of the total cable used, patch panels, etc. before the actual

deployment, and you can even plan alternate cable paths to see which one suites

you better. All you need to start with this application is a blueprint of the

floor. You can input the blueprint in either BMP or by using any popular CAD

format such as .dxf or .wmf. You can even enter it through the clipboard.

Once you are done with the blueprint of the floor, you have to enter the

ports, racks and conduits location on the blueprint. You can do that by using

the inbuilt component library. The component library also has predefined

components from major Structured Cabling players like, RiT, Panduit, Connex,

AMP, etc.

Once the details are filled in the system one can automatically generate the

building plan, specifications, wiring lists, list of materials used, task list,

bale list, conduit list and legends. It also lets you do real time calculation

of prices of all cables and conduits. And you can even export price details into

construction estimate software. You can get this software from http://www.

cableproject.net/.

Troubleshooting



Troubleshooting Structured Cabling is not an easy task. We are familiar with the
messy web of those patch cords and those long and never ending cablings.

According to a survey, 70% of the causes for downtime are related to the faulty

cable. Either the cable got disconnected; some rat chewed it up, or it got

broken while some construction work was happening, and so on. The outcome is the

same -DownTime! Here are some life saver technologies and tools for you to

significantly reduce this downtime.

Intelligent cabling



Till the recent past, there was no specific ways to figure out a broken link on
a near real-time basis. With the advent of intelligent cabling, this problem

seems to be getting resolved. In an intelligent network setup, the systems can

automatically find out devices connected with the physical layer and can link

them with connectivity changes and also track the device locations. Essentially

in an intelligent cabling setup, the specialized ports, patch panels and outlets

work like sensors, which can be managed through a software over SNMP or some

other similar protocol. So essentially in an intelligent cabling setup, you/

SNMP enable the physical layer devices. With intelligent cabling, a person can

get a logical view of the entire network.

With intelligent cabling, documentation of the network layer also becomes

automated and accurate. It also provides security as it can identify

unauthorized modifications on a real time basis and can generate alerts

automatically.

The Sensors



Intelligent cabling works around the specialized physical layer devices which
works as sensors and are placed throughout the structured cabling. The job of

the sensors is to monitor the status of all possible ports. These sensors send

the information back into a centralized system in a near real time fashion. And

from this centralized system some specialised applications are able to detect

the errors when generated. These specialized applications are able to separate

the errors and can even suggest a possible solution while alerting.

In a traditional system, if let's say a cable gets bad, the admin would have

to go through a diagram of the network topology to find the incident point and

then have to follow the logical path of the network to identify the problem

before he can correct it. But in case of intelligent cabling, the admin is

alerted with the precise location of the fault and also the system can instruct

him on how to fix the problem.

The intelligent structured cabling is able to track IP-based devices such

that, the network manager can access, control, and manage them from one central

location. This is more critical considering today's distributed computing

environments and the acute need to troubleshoot them remotely.

But the important point to understand here is that, intelligent cabling is

not just a single software or hardware, but is a full fledged one which starts

from a single intelligent patch panel (the lowest bit of the system) and ends to

a central database which keeps track of all the feeds which are generated from

such system. Some of the prominent players in intelligent cabling in India are

Digi-Link (through RiT), Panduit, TyCO, etc.

PatchSee

Generally a complete intelligent cabling system could be pretty expensive. But if you are interested and would like to start with some not so expensive things then you could give PatchSee patch cords a try. These specialized patch cords are also called the intelligent patch cords which help in indentifying the other end of the cable with a very smart trick. For instance, suppose you are not getting a network link to a PC and you want to see from where that cable originates, all you have to do is to take out the cable from the PC and insert it to a light injector. This light injector injects a laser light to two plastic optic fibres which are connected at the back of the RJ45/11 connector. Now this light is sent through the POF and it reaches to the other end and gets visible, so you can easily find out that the cable with the glowing light is the other end of the cable which you are looking for. You can order for a free sample of PatchSee from http://www.patchsee-solution.com/en/patchseecom-218-53

LANSurveyor



It won't be a real help if you get an alert which says the Ethernet cable
connected to machine 192.168.1.152 has gone bad. Because the biggest problem

which an admin faces while trouble shooting cabling errors is to find the right

cable. And if you don't have intelligent cabling deployed, it becomes very

difficult to pinpoint the error. The only thing which can help is an elaborated

network diagram or map. But there is a bigger challenge. Making such a

elaborated map is not kids play and takes a lot of human hours, and in today's

dynamic infrastructure setup, updating this map regularly for let's say 1000

node network becomes nearly impossible. Just imagine everyday all your 1000

nodes get a new IP from the DHCP and your network diagram needs updating.

To make the mapping process automated, you have this one of its kind

software. It's not a cheap deal. You have to spend some 40,000 INR to get a

licensed copy of this application. But once you use it you will start loving it.

This is the only software in my knowledge that is available today which gives

you a true map (even exportable to Visio) of your network including cable links,

patch cord details connection specific ports and machines, etc.

And the beauty is that one can set alerts on not only devices such as PCs,

switches, routers, etc, but also to cable connections connecting two devices. So

in case of a cable failure you will get an error which will not only tell you

which IP has got disconnected but will also tell you the port of the switch

connection and the machines which were connected through that particular patch

cable.

Fluke's EtherScope



It's a handy device to troubleshoot your network. The troubleshooter comes with
a hefty price but if you have a complicated and troublesome network then this

can help you to a great extent. EtherScope II from Fluke networks has a RJ45 LAN

port which can support Gbps networks and a Fiber Optic 1000 Base-X port. This

means both your Copper and Fiber needs can be easily managed by this device.

The interface for this device is a touch screen which is pretty tough and can

withstand shocks. The device when connected to a network lets you access its

interface over a Web browser. The device is lightweight with only 1.15Kg. This

makes it comfortable to carry around and use anywhere on your network.

The software which powers the device is essentially a customized Linux core

with some standard tools like a Web browser, a file manager, calendar, etc and

not to forget the key thing -EtherScope Network Assistant application for LAN

and WLAN. This is what does the magic.

This application is essentially a packet capturing, logging and reporting

application which can search devices, find the amount of traffic transferred

between devices and report in case of network problems. But that's not the great

thing about it. There is a lot more.

One great thing which it can do is that it can tell the distance (the cable

length) from these devices to the next connected node.

Which means you can just connect it to any cable whose other end is

terminated to any network device and can predict where the device is kept

in.This could be a great help for network admins to determine the other end of a

network cable.

The other great feature of the device is its capability to trace the switch

route to any machine. Let's say, you have a faulty machine on your network

somewhere in the building and you want to find exactly where the machine is,

this device can tell you the route through the switches (managed switches) and

its ports.

For example, there are five switches between this device and the faulty

machine, then it will detect all five switches and their respective port numbers

from where the connection is happening. This is a great feature because one of

the biggest challenges for a network admin is to figure out and pinpoint the

cable faults in a huge campus with lots of cascaded switches.

Over and above, this tool also has standard cable testing features which can

easily detect and tell if there is any problem with the cable and in which pair

of the twisted-pairs.

This device can do lots more but that is out of the scope of this article. If

you want to learn more about it then please visit http://tiny.cc/JHCxt.