Cabling the Campus

Campus environments have always been my personal favorite to tackle, and they aren’t exclusive to education, but exist in enterprise and SMBs. For you folks sitting in a building, if you have floors above or below you or expansion joints in the building, then you likely qualify for fiber, a small factoid I wanted to put out there. Our recent campus job was however in a parochial school and it proved a challenging campus.

About eight years ago, I was introduced to the school and we invested some sweat equity into learning their campus and more about their needs. Our proposals were not accepted, we never heard why and only learned a couple of years ago that the parent volunteers and two people in charge of the computer lab thought they could build the network themselves, and so they did.

Because of what they built, we were called in over a year ago to meet with a new incoming team of one- the “team” being an art teacher with an IT degree, responsible for taking charge of the computer lab and IT functions at the school. Our long-term recommendation was finally taken seriously and last summer we completed Phase I of the network build out, which was to provide a fiber (multi-mode) backbone network for the campus with 1-Gbps managed switching.

We deployed multi-mode fiber with spare pairs using an armored cable. Too often, in office buildings, we find multi-mode fiber that is patch-panel grade, which offers no protection against other contractors, no durability in pull nor resistance to the installation process (wear, tear, rip due to friction). The fiber backbone provided the highway for the campus, eliminated latent long-copper drops and removed a host of sins associated with improper cabling methods. So, it was the big bang and we still think they got the most for the bucks spent, but we all knew it still wasn’t enough. Complete replacement of all drops, including new drops for LCD overhead projectors and unmet previous needs, would provide a stable physical network infrastructure that this campus lacked.

During spring break (VoiceCon Orlando), we were asked to complete Phase II of the project, which was to re-wire the entire campus. Phase III is a WiFi solution still being considered. Because cabling is disruptive, especially when you are intruding upon workspaces and places of business, scheduling the work is critical. It’s key in this particular niche that we serve. When the customer says we want cabling over spring break and gives you wide open access, you don’t wait, hesitate or give it a second thought. You act. So consider scheduling, and this applies to off-hours operations as well. Of course we also work odd hours to satisfy the needs of each customer and a little planning and understanding other vendor schedules, such as when floor waxing, carpet shampooing and cleaning cycles are scheduled and in which buildings and times. These are a few considerations to note upfront before you undertake a project.

WHAT WE OBSERVED

Cabling

: Leave it to the professionals, and this means excluding IT guys, retired telephone company technicians or anyone else that just likes to dabble in cabling. Most don’t know what they’re doing and neglect the hard tasks or obstacles and implement a substitute instead, which at first glance might seem to make cabling easier.

Cabling is often dirty and hard work. That doesn’t mean any grunt can do it, but rather that someone is willing to do grunt work with the notion and mindset of what it takes to install a good network (cable plant). I’m always amazed at someone marginalizing cabling, and we always welcome volunteers who think it’s no big deal to exercise their talents with us on a job. Some customers take some of what you tell them and form a diluted concept and then, as the folks at this school attempted and failed, they proved saving money isn’t enough when your only backing is good intentions.

Common mistakes include: