I've inherited a rat's nest of cabling. What now?

Posted by hydroparadise on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by hydroparadise
Published on 2012-08-24T16:05:30Z Indexed on 2012/08/30 15:40 UTC
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You know, you see pictures like below and sort of chuckle until you actually have to deal with it.

I have just inherited something that looks like the picture below. The culture of the organization does not tolerate down time very well, yet I have been tasked to 'clean it up'. The network functions as it is, and there doesn't seem to be rush to get it done, but I will have to tackle the bear at some point. I get the ugly eye when I mention anything about weekends.

So my question goes, is there sort of a structured approach to this problem?

My Ideas thus far:

  • Label, Label, Label
  • Make up my patch cables of desired length ahead of time
  • Do each subnet at a time (appears that each subnet are for different physical locations)
  • Replace one cable at a time for each subnet
  • It's easier to get forgiveness than permision?

A Rat's Nest

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