Networking

Running your cables inside walls, that's what I wanted to title this post but since I want to make these posts related, oh so be it. So you have your basic networking tools for crimping ready, now you're thinking you don't want the cables to be crossing around everywhere in your living room. You can hide your cables by running the cables on the ceiling then go into the walls and eventually pop-out on the walls. You can use the following toolkits: From left to right: Modular Jack Instead of RJ45, you should terminate the UTP with modular jacks if you want to run your cables in walls. These jacks can then act just like your phone connection on the wall. They come in various of colors, and cost probably about US$ 3 or less. Wall Faceplate From the modular jack, you can put them in these faceplates. The faceplate holds still the modular jack on the wall. Then you can screw the faceplate to the wall. Punch Tool Different from the RJ45, you use different tool to ter...

I want to show you how easy it is to set up your own home networking , you don't need an expert to do this work. First let me show you all the basic tools needed to do this. Cables and crimping tools From left to right, you can see in the picture: UTP Cable UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair ) is the widely used cable for networking, you can use other cables though but UTP and the networking cards are easier to get and configure. UTP is basically 4 pairs of cables (8 cables) with different colors to identify them, twisted together to prevent the crosstalk or interference when transmitting signals. The picture is the type of cable if you buy in bulk, it contains 305m or 1000feet of cable, you can also buy them per meter. Currently there are Cat5, Cat5e, and Cat6 cables. What differentiate them are the bandwidth that they can deliver. Typical cat5 cable can deliver about 100mbps. The Cat5e is an enhanced version of the cat5 cable, they can deliver up to 1000mbps, but most I'v...

In an enterprise environment there should be thousands if not millions of cables running around for data connectivity. Managing all those cables can be very frustrating if you don't carefully design the cable placement and everything else. That's why most modern buildings nowadays have cable trays in place just on top of the ceilings. The reasons to use cable trays are obvious, to keep the cables from tangling and to keep cables used for different purposes away from other cables, e.g. networking cables away from electrical cables to prevent interference. The pictures above show how the cables are arranged at cable trays , you can see that the cables - gray cables for UTP cables, blue cables for fiber optic cables , and black cables for electric cables - are separated and arranged. In reality, sometimes you can't easily arrange them like that, because the cable installers/contractors are commonly different for networking cables, electrical cables, and even for th...

It is very important to give labels to your cables . Labels make your network troubleshooting less painful. In case of problem, you don't want to trace every cable end to end. Each end of cable should be labeled, the label should give information about where the cable is connected to. It is really up to you or your company policy how the description format of the labels should be written. The most important thing is to keep the writings not too long, and easy to be interpreted. For example, I have a fiber optic cable at the IDF going to the MDF , I like to name it like this: for the IDF cable: MDF_Core1_23 -> it tells that the cable is going to the MDF Core Switch 1 at port 23. for the MDF cable: IDF_2Fl_1_1 -> it tells that the cable is going to the IDF at second floor, switch 1 and port1. Well I suggest try designing your own labeling scheme and don't forget to write it down and give the description to fellow network installers and the project owner. You ...

You typically find bulks of cables like the left picture shows in a project. It's not strange to have a project with 2000 clients to be connected in a network. To arrange cables like these is a nightmare for network installers if you don't provide yourselves with cable managers. Usually the cable managers also provided by the racks vendors. You can ask them if they have it, or use cable managers from other vendors if you don't like the way it looks. Different cable managers have different ways to manage cables , so it's better to consult the vendors on how to install the cables according their products. I need to remind you that some cable managers make the look of your racks neater but if you don't install them accordingly, they will make your future improvement harder. What I mean is that you have to design also how the cables run inside your rack should be. You don't want the outer look of your rack looks neat while you have spaghetti cables in...

In the world of computers, networking is the practice of linking two or more computing devices together for the purpose of sharing data. Networks are built with a mix of computer hardware and computer software. Area Networks Networks can be categorized in several different ways. One approach defines the type of network according to the geographic area it spans. Local area networks (LANs), for example, typically reach across a single home, whereas wide area networks (WANs), reach across cities, states, or even across the world. The Internet is the world's largest public WAN. Network Design Computer networks also differ in their design. The two types of high-level network design are called client-server and peer-to-peer. Client-server networks feature centralized server computers that store email, Web pages, files and or applications. On a peer-to-peer network, conversely, all computers tend to support the same functions. Client-server networks are much more common in business and pe...