Simple Cable Marking Standards

Sat Feb 18 00:37:58 UTC 2012

On Sat, 18 Feb 2012, Don Gould wrote:

> I would like to make a wiki page with links to useful resources.
> This issue cased me problems last week.
> I don't know what the conventions are.

The conventions often work back to whatever is appropriate in your 
environment.  Some people use TIA/EIA 606-A as a starting point and work 
out from there.  Other shops are much less formal.  Still others do no 
labeling whatsoever.

My employer's standard for copper data and voice wiring was already pretty 
well formed by the time I started.  There really wasn't anything in place 
for fiber, so I developed a standard for naming racks, fiber bays within a 
rack, and connectors within a bay.  Cross-connect information (source 
rack/bay/connector(s), destination rack/bay/connector(s), anong with 
useful items like jumper type/length and any free-form notes, end-to-end 
test results, etc will eventually be stored in a database, using a path 
ID (analogous to a telco circuit ID) that is labeled on each jumper in 
the path and the interface descriptions of the end devices.  It's one of 
those projects I've been wanting to get back to, but workload and 
diminishing DB/development kung-fu have conspired against me so far :(

The long-term goal is to get that all of that accessible from a web app 
that can be access in the field by a tech with a laptop or a mobile 
device.

jms