Small Business Tech Tips

The Problem:

We’ve all seen it and we’ve all done it. A rat’s nest of wires stuck between your desk and the wall. Afterall, no one is ever going to see it and by the time you ever need to get back there, you’ll just pay someone to clean it all up…or so you think.

 Fast forward a few years and that rat’s nest has been repeated with all your employee’s desks and in your server room.

Still not much of a problem … until…one of your employees can’t get on the company network or can’t retreive that important email.

Now what do you do?

You or someone you hire crawls behind the desk to check the wires and everything looks ok. The computer is plugged into the right jack in the wall. But where does that wall jack connect to exactly?

You rush to that even bigger rat’s nest of wires somewhere near your server and there it is. A rat’s nest of wires. Which one is connected to that employee’s computer? You flash back to the conversation with the cable guy “What’s this line itme on yor quote for labeling?” “Why do I need that?” “Can we just skip it and do it later?” Well it’s later and its still not done.

Sound familiar or do you fear you’re heading down this path? Don’t.

Here’s what you need to do.

Make sure that all of your company’s jacks have a number on them (and make sure they are never painted over).

Make sure this number corresponds to the same number where all your jacks terminate in your server room. Then you can clearly identify which cable is connected to that employee’s computer. Maybe it’s been knocked loose. Or it could have been chewed by an animal in the ceiling or wall. either way, a clearly labeled jack will save you a potentially major headache down the line.

A good cabling job will be obvious and will be well worth your time and money to maintain along the way rather than one day having to play catch up.

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Read more by: Jim De Vico

Tags: best practices, cable, network, wiring

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Small Business Computer Tips, Small Business Management Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.