Network Cabinets

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The main network cabinet:

The photo below shows the network cabinet that contains the core of this manufacturing plant's networking equipment. It contains WAN equipment (CSU/DSUs and routers linking it to other corporate sites, and back to the head office), and all office area switches, hubs and patch panels.

In addition to the initial equipment required, the cabinet has enough room for a UPS and storage for network maps and diagrams --- and room for future expansion.

The interior shot shows patch panels mounted on the left, and electronic equipment to the right:

The 10/100 Mbps hubs are loosely associated with particular office areas (certain patch panels). Known heavy users are distributed evenly amongst the hubs. All servers are assigned specific ports on the switch, as are all hubs. The bright orange innerduct tubing can be seen entering the network cabinet from above. Unseen is the coaxial antenna cable for the wireless Ethernet bridge, which is cable tied to the innerduct.
(Note: the double doors on this cabinet slide into side slots, such that you can have full, unencumbered access to its interior.)

In more detail, we can see

	WAN equipment near the top of the rack mount;
	thin orange fibreoptic patch cords connected to the fibre patch panel;
	red UTP patch cords for critical network components (hubs, switches and fileservers);
	blue UTP patch cords for all other equipment.

Most of the equipment in this stack have remote management, and/or a Web-based interface. Patch cords and cross-over cables for critical components are tagged and labeled. Their precise location in the switches and hubs are documented. This allows me to know precisely what is causing a problem if, for example, I'm on the opposite side of the city and my monitoring programs alert me that Port #4 on Hub #6 is generating excessive error packets.

Other messages that I may get from the network stack, as configured:

	Link to Port #12 on Switch #1 has Failed (indicating to me that the connection to the wireless Ethernet bridge has failed, for whatever reason.)
	From Switch #1: Main Link has Failed, and the Standby Link is now Active (indicating that something with the fibreoptic trunk line, or fibre modules has failed.)

Rear views of these network devices show the all the gory Details.
See the network cabinets located at the remote end from this main cabinet.

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Last modified: Monday, May 08, 2000