Subnets and Cable Tracing

[tonybradley]

Two separate topics really, but I didn't feel like creating two separate threads.

One- can you subnet devices at multiple remote locations onto the same subnet? In other words, if I have 10 devices in New York and 25 devices in California and 15 devices in London and another 10 devices in Sydney that all need to be segmented from the LAN, can I place them all into the same subnet, or does each site need its own subnet due to routing / switching restrictions?

Two- if you have a cable closet that is a disaster, how long would you estimate it should take to sort it out? Assume you have 500 connections in the closet and you need to trace and tag them with the proper network jack locations. How long do you think the project would take, or how long do you think tracing and tagging takes on average for each connection?

[phishphreek]

One: Yes. You would need them all on separate subnets. A router routes between subnets. AFAIK, you can't have two interfaces on the same subnet. In order to have them on the same subnet... you'd need a hell of a lot of cable and a lot of repeaters.

TWO: I had to do this some time back. I did it over several days... so I can't say how long for sure. It really depends on what you call a "mess". I would guestimate that it took about 10-20 seconds to trace from the patch panel to the switch and then write it down. Another 30 seconds to 1 min to print the lable and stick it? I never really paid attention. I just put on some music and got down to it.

I guess it also depends on if you are labeling everything. Not just the patch panels and the switches... but on the workstation side too?

Tracing the patch panel to the actual network jack would take quite a bit more time. And some two-way radios. You'd have to have people with network/cable testers on either end talking back and forth to confirm a match. I suppose the guy on the patch panel could just use a loopback... but either way.

I suppose if you got all the patch panels and switches labled, you could look at the MAC address tables in the switches and then map them to the actual computer. Thats hoping that you know the exact physical location of the computer... and the exact port?

You'd be SOL if there was nothing plugged into the port?

The time is going to change a lot depending on which method you go about mapping your wires and ports? I may not be the most efficient at it? Its something I rarely have to do...

[XTC46]

Doing the clean up will also depend on how mission critical the stuff you are unplugging is. I was able to do one of our switch racks in about 2 hours becasue I just ripped everything out and started from scratch becasue it was for 3 floors of an office building and it was after hours so no one was online. It took me equal amount of time to do our servers becasue the down time for those had to be minimal and i had to trace each wire, and do one at a time rather than starting from scrath. After the initial wiring it tooki about 15 minutes to tie eveything up and make the proper cuts in the raceways to make them all pretty lol.