zjohnr
Regular Contributor
The local small non-profit where I volunteer ... and occasionally try to help out with the PC LAN ... is doing some minor rearranging.
They are going to move 3 people ... and their computers, of course ... to a different room/office in one of their buildings. Since that room had no wall ports for either telephones or ethernet, they had the company which supports their internal phone PBX run 3 new ethernet lines at the same time they ran the 3 new phone lines to the room.
What the folks who ran the cable did not do was actually test the ethernet ports after they finished the install. I asked them about this and they said they didn't have a tester with them that day. The tester was apparently with another tech who was working at a more remote location.
They also didn't provide any patch cables to connect 3 ports on the 12-port HP switch used in that building to the new cat 5e they ran. (But perhaps this is just SOP?) But, being a pack rat, I easily found 3 short (5-6 feet) lengths of cat 5 patch cable at home and used them to connect the new lines to the switch. (My big "value-add" to the install process so far.
)
I then used my laptop to plug into the new wall ports to check that the lines worked. I had no problem refreshing the google.com site in my browser so all of the new lines seem to work fine.
Is there any reason to suggest to the non-profit's management that they ask the techs who did the install to come back and finish it by plugging in a cable tester? The cable they ran was just cat 5e and each length was no more than 75' long (... probably a lot less). The switch only supports 10/100. It is unlikely that they will ever move to gigabit ethernet, but if they did then this would definitely be years in the future.
I'm not sure whether to just let this be or recommend they ask the techs to come back and take the few minutes to go through the motions of properly finishing the job. I don't know enough about what could possibly go wrong with a cat 5e cable installation to have an opinion.
-irrational john
They are going to move 3 people ... and their computers, of course ... to a different room/office in one of their buildings. Since that room had no wall ports for either telephones or ethernet, they had the company which supports their internal phone PBX run 3 new ethernet lines at the same time they ran the 3 new phone lines to the room.
What the folks who ran the cable did not do was actually test the ethernet ports after they finished the install. I asked them about this and they said they didn't have a tester with them that day. The tester was apparently with another tech who was working at a more remote location.
They also didn't provide any patch cables to connect 3 ports on the 12-port HP switch used in that building to the new cat 5e they ran. (But perhaps this is just SOP?) But, being a pack rat, I easily found 3 short (5-6 feet) lengths of cat 5 patch cable at home and used them to connect the new lines to the switch. (My big "value-add" to the install process so far.
)I then used my laptop to plug into the new wall ports to check that the lines worked. I had no problem refreshing the google.com site in my browser so all of the new lines seem to work fine.
Is there any reason to suggest to the non-profit's management that they ask the techs who did the install to come back and finish it by plugging in a cable tester? The cable they ran was just cat 5e and each length was no more than 75' long (... probably a lot less). The switch only supports 10/100. It is unlikely that they will ever move to gigabit ethernet, but if they did then this would definitely be years in the future.
I'm not sure whether to just let this be or recommend they ask the techs to come back and take the few minutes to go through the motions of properly finishing the job. I don't know enough about what could possibly go wrong with a cat 5e cable installation to have an opinion.
-irrational john
