Colour coding endpoints and devices

[Gaz]

Over the summer I'll be colour coding endpoints and devices using ethernet cables. 0.5m for patch panel and 2m for endpoints.

I've a few questions however regarding the 0.5m patch cables are they able to achieve gigabit speeds at such a sort length? I'm sure I read something about a minimum length for a CAT5e cable but google isn't bringing anything solid up.

 

Are patch cables pretty much the same quality from various places? such as, CPC, comms-express, rs-online, cable monkey, broadbandbuyer etc etc.

I'll also be getting some Cisco SG300-52 and SG300-28 series gigabit switches to drive it all.

 

My thinking for colouring is:

Yellow for Printers

Red for Server

Blue for Desktops

Grey for Guest ports

Orange for Promethean PC's

Black for NAS

Pink for Smoothwalls

Purple for Routers

 

Any thoughts? recommendations?

[glennda]

Sounds good - Network Cables are essentially Network cables! Make sure you get ones with a decent boot on them otherwise they can snap easily.

 

Apart from that its fine - Oh and Brown for printers!

[Gaz]

Go on I'll bite. Why brown for printers?

[plexer]

I would say buy mayflex excel patch leads they are lovely, last ones I bought from comms-express were very wirey and springy.

 

Ben

[glennda]

Go on I'll bite. Why brown for printers?

 

Just because i have always done brown for printers as they tend to be the biggest pain in the backside i.e brown

[SYNACK]

Yeap, should work fine. Your lucky you can get so many colours there, our suppliers strech to blue, grey, white and sometimes yellow and red.

[pete]

We use colours to denote length and purpose:

 

Yellow = 1 to 3 metres and for client devices / printers.

Green = 3, 5 or 10 metres and is for servers

Red = Uplinks between switches or Danger Will Robinson scenarios.

Orange = POE

Black = Storage

Blue = Generic 0.3 to 0.5m patch panel to switch cable

Grey = This is an old cable that needs replacing.

 

Being able to ask "is the yellow cable plugged in?" saves a lot of walking across the school.

[User3204]

The only thing I'd be leaning towards is the clips, I have found some of the clips don't work in some patch panels very well.

 

the scheme I use is:

Red = Links, and uplinks

Orange = Phones

Yellow = Staff desktops

Green = Wireless APs

Blue = ICT suite 1

Black = ICT suite 2

Pink = ICT suite 3

White = General student desktops

Grey = same as white, but I am getting to the stage where I can start to split them

Purple / Indigo = Links to outside the school (LA upstream/ICT ADSL)

 

 

.. Hmm brown, this is a colour I've not seen before..

 

 

What I have found that was really useful, was getting some cable labelling sticky paper (not tape), which I could print onto, this has meant I have labelled the 400 cables in the main switch cabinet at both ends, with a unique number, and what use, and the length of the cable. I'll dig out the name and label info tomorrow. I started labelling them when my network cabler told me they couldn't get any other cable colours.

 

 

The only cabinet where this doesn't apply is the Server cabinet, where I need to have a go through as when you have 4 or 8 red leads going to one server it gets a bit confusing, and I haven't labelled these cables yet.

 

 

All the leads in classrooms and offices are generally grey/white, the only times this is different is in the ICT offices, and the Siemens phones that all came with a thick black cable.

 

 

I also use 6" cables for switch to switch when I can get away with it. I get gigabit over it, so the length is not a problem.

Edited May 30, 2012 by User3204

[Gaz]

Cheers for the ideas.

I was going to colour code the actual devices as well not just in the patch panel side.

I forgot about the uplink, we only have 1 so I think I'll use Red for that, my logic behind the colour Red for servers is that Red = danger, i.e. don't unplug!!! same goes for uplink.

 

The comms-express cables seem very good value for money, but I've not used them before. I may as well get them from there as I'll be getting the rest of the kit from them.