[Asterisk-biz] Forklift a 2000 phone PBX

[steve szmidt]

I think it's a credit to the designers of the ethernet standard, that it works 
under the conditions that some people create. For those who never got the 
formal education on the subject it's often just a bunch of cables and wires.

One of my favorite is one where the "administrator" has the twisted pair run 
over a fluorescent light to "get it out of the way". He's reason was that the 
ceiling was too high and I assume too dangerous in his mind. It took me less 
than 5 minutes to find a string and toss it over a ceiling beam and hoist the 
cable safely off the light fixture. 

Of course the same guy had even managed to find a "limited Cat 3" cable from 
God knows where, to use for some 100Base-T legs. All the jacks were Cat 3 and 
the stack of hubs and switches he had were sitting on a wall mounted shelf. 
With 3 out of four screws halfway out of the wall. His excuse? Don't fix what 
is not broken! 

Anyway, this is going off topic, but the moral of the story is that if you 
want something to work properly with minimum trouble, it needs to be done 
right. Anyone can pull a cable, but do they have the faintest idea of what it 
takes to degrade the network performance by a badly pulled cable? Unlike the 
"administrator" you might then realize that securing a cable by twisting it 
around a steel beam might not be the best thing to do for ethernet signals.

If that someone is you, then at least take the time to study up on it online 
before your next job. Find out what distances you need from electrical 
sources like lights, cables, outlets, ground wires etc. Discover what the 
Do's and the Don't are.

-- 

Steve Szmidt

"They that would give up essential liberty for temporary safety 
deserve neither liberty nor safety."
                                Benjamin Franklin