Electricians doing network cabling...

[Koldov]

Now I'm not wanting to tar every electrician with the same brush or re-enforce a stereotype, but...

 

Over the holiday I was asked to put wi-fi into a seperate building (actually a portacabin/terrapin hut thing that was built years ago before I started).

 

However, I knew there were 3 network cables installed when they did the initial build and one of those wasn't currently being used. So with bit of repatching in the core cab and a spare WAP from a corridor, I thought it would be a 5 minute job...

 

I plug the AP into the unused network socket to test if everything would work as expected, but although the AP started up (so at least PoE was working) it then started flashing red... never a good sign. Was the cable run to long? Was the patch cable faulty? Did I miss something and it isn't actually this simple...?

 

Checking on the physical switch it was flashing amber and in the GUI it was showing horrendous packet loss.

 

So, I decide to see what the problem could be by first opening up the network socket...

 

 

Now, you know it could still work I guess, but the thing that surprised me was that the cable was purple and I knew the original runs were a heavy duty black cable... So, I followed it through into the adjoining room pulled out all the desks and filing cabinets and opened up all the trunking... I guess they had some spare cable!

 

 

And yes, you guessed it, this is what joined the purple extension and black original run cable...

 

 

Punched in with as much care and attention as the wall socket...

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by Koldov

[3s-gtech]

Looks like you have CAT5e joined to CAT6 there - classy.

[Rob_D]

This is why our sparkys are happy to run the cable but let us do the terminating ourselves.

[Disease]

We get our Sparkys to run it and then we terminate, works well.

[Disease]

They has messed the junction box connections good and proper, no way it is going to work.

[Katy]

Yeah pretty sure when I've used those connectors you have two sets of 4 on each side - side A is one cable, side B the other cable, and they've put half of A on B, and vice versa. Surprised if a single one works if you run a tester down the entire run!

 

We sometimes get our electricians to run data cable (in the buildings with 5e and under supervision) but we do the termination

[Jamman960]

Oh dear, at least they attempted to use a coupler, I found a cable that had been twisted togeather and taped with electrical tape once

[Rob_D]

Oh dear, at least they attempted to use a coupler, I found a cable that had been twisted togeather and taped with electrical tape once

How well did that work? (asking for a friend)

[Chris_Cook]

I found the old twist-and-tape method in a couple of our maths classrooms after they re-did the ceiling recently. It had been working fine for at least the last decade!

 

My dad has told me of a school he worked in where someone was paid to put a new cable across/under a car park. Eventually they found a join below a manhole cover. They had used a reef knot. Apparently, they didn't understand about connecting the copper bits.

 

Luckily our electricians are good at data.

[msi_school]

My personal favourite

 

 

it is beautifully crimped

[ITGURU]

Sometimes you cannot even trust Data contractors - we have some network sockets terminated years ago by Data Cabling - if we take the single sockets off the wall there is an unterminated cable behind the socket, but terminated at the patch panel end !

[Jamman960]

How well did that work? (asking for a friend)

 

It worked surprisingly well until someone managed to pull the socket off the wall which must have disturbed it 😂

[Roberto]

Now I'm not wanting to tar every electrician with the same brush

 

Oh I would, and feather them afterward if they’re looking like touching the network cabling.

[Jcx500]

At my previous place, we would normally do the run ourselves if we wasn't busy. if we was the sparkys would run it and we would terminate it.

[3s-gtech]

Our usual electricians did a huge amount of upskilling when they got a big networking and infrastructure contract some years back. They now do everything with AMP connectors now, have very good testers, and can even do the fibre too.

[PotNoodleTech]

NO it is a thing - seen it a lot in the past.

 

As with all contractors, you need to be on 'em and checking their work. Dont just send the order in go home and come back 6 months later when you notice it's been botched to hell.