Technical > Photos of Broadband gear > My first IT job and this is what I got to work with...

My first IT job and this is what I got to work with...

Looks like a Skittles commercial.

reply to michieru
.. Taste the bits?

reply to michieru
Looks like my server room at work. Oh joy of joys!

reply to michieru
That ain't too bad actually. Just needs serious cable management.

Not too scary. Almost looks fun for a first job! Congrats!

reply to michieru
Pink patch cable - wow.
Looks like whoever set it up had envisioned that cable colour would correspond to function, unfortunately without any other labelling its hard to tell one red cable from the next one.

On the bright side the rest of the devices are marked.

reply to michieru
I've seen the same sort of thing happen at my work.

In order to minimize downtime and get things up and running as fast as possible, people pay no attention at all to cable management and just go ahead and connect the cables every which way.

After that, the equipment is up and running and it's impossible to do any cable management without taking the equipment down for a bit, so cable management never happens.

Rinse and repeat a few times, and you end up with atrocities like the one in the picture above.

reply to Thane_Bitter
It originally was properly configured but from what the employees told me the place has had a few years of neglect due to the city being cheap. Different contractors trying to run their own thing and so forth.

are you a contractor or permanent hire?
--
Think Ahead. Learn More. Solve Now!

Paid intern actually.

reply to michieru
Typical of a city IT department. Decent hardware, horrible installation and management/maintenance practices.

reply to michieru
Hehehe My guess was either city or government stuff.

Nice equipment that costs a lot, installed and maintained like shit.

In all honesty though this isn't a bad gig. Cable management bigtime yes. But not impossible by any means. Will be a great task to get feet wet as an intern and learn about how much clients scream when one cable gets pulled.

Then you might be able to lecture on the fact of the idiots they hired to do the job before

Now, make sure you ask people here if they prefer zip ties, velcro, or lacing.

reply to michieru
i dont label my patch cables, but all devices have their hostname and ip address on the front.

the wall drops (phone and data) are labeled on both ends. and before i plug a patch cable from the patch panel to the phone system or network switch, i make sure to run it through all the cable management i have on the rack.

reply to voxframe
Once I fix the majority of the wifi issues in certain parts of the city I will worry about that mess later. Trying to get everything up and running before the year ends but I am severely limited at installation locations. I have about 8 Cisco 1520 Aironets just chilling on my desk at the moment.

reply to michieru

reply to michieru
Whoever did that should be hanged by a bundle of patch cords!
I always say "seen worse" but that about takes the cake...disgusting!

reply to michieru
Thats nothing. We just moved into a old bldg at work where they had a rack for the servers and switches about 8 feet away from the patch panels, its a mess. And then when the switch starts acting up where you cant have a phone and computer connected with 1 line therefore you have to run lines for each seperate devices, it doesnt help the mess at all.

reply to jeffmoss26
if that is the worse you have seen, then you havent seen anything yet.

reply to Thane_Bitter
Yes there is, I mean this is the picture of one rack there is a total of three and two patch panels which are in the same situation. This is just where I need to work in most often. Either way I am new to working in such a environment so yeah maybe I haven't seen nothing yet but when you got police, fire, public wifi, and the actual work domain all in one room and some going through the same equipment for me that's a mess beyond words.

reply to michieru
While messy, the advantage here, is the different colored cables, so it's at least a little easier to trace when something goes wrong.
Better then a sea of white/blue/red/etc.