Ever had to build an entire network and new cabling was done before network design?

Ugh, just thinking about is making me aggravated. I was given a project for a new build out of the network from the ground up Voip/AP/WLC/Firewall/Switch/Router for a fairly large newly renovated 5 floor building which will serve as church/school/hotel its about 125 nodes. It is my boss's church so he donating the equipment and the install. We will support it for 1 month post deployment then hand it off to a MSP. I guess so he doesn't feel bad charging the church.

I was originally told that we will work with them and tell them where we need to the cabling to go and they will have the cable installer do it. Went there today to survey the site with my boss and everything was pre cabled a week before. The project manager which I don't think has any experience with a large site made the design. So they decided to run all 125 cables which is probably over 1k feet of cable each directly to the server room in the bottom floor. I said immediately that it is recommended to break it up per floor, its best practice but they already spend a lot on the cabling and do not want to spend more. We do not want to deal with the cabling so my boss suggested why don't we just set up a single 6500 chassis with multiple blades and connect all 125 cables there and voila.

My whole thing is if we end up doing the core this way and the MSP picks it up the network. I picture it now they will survey the site and make the exact same recommendations I made and make the observation this network was poorly designed, etc which will reflect bad on me. I could see the heads at the church sprinkling that comment back to my boss and I look like I do not know what I am doing. Because surely my boss will forget that I made any suggestions.

Anyone had to go in already with a bad design for a new deployment? How did you remedy the situation? Did you just make the best of the situation and said f* it?

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Comments

PJ_Sneakers

Talk to your boss and be honest. Give him your opinion, but realize that he has the final say.

ccnpninja

Don't let the storm come and just sit watching it. Take a position. Speak up your mind and give solid arguments. Explain how this bad design may impact the quality of work and how it will lead to cabling disasters.

networker050184

Bringing them all to a single room/chassis makes sense to me. Why do you think this is an issue?

But yeah, running the cable first is probably not the best idea....

DeathByMisadventure

dmarcisco wrote: »

So they decided to run all 125 cables which is probably over 1k feet of cable each directly to the server room in the bottom floor.

Wait, a thousand feet is well beyond ethernet limitations of about 300 foot. It's all useless.

networker050184

Think he meant an aggregate length of 1k feet, not each individual cable is 1k feet.

kurosaki00

huh? "Please connect to smart toilet." da fu...

Legacy User

Lol that 1k may be grossly exaggerated I typed that when I got back from the site aggravated. I'm not sure what the actual length is but I'm sure it's in the triple digits especially from the 5th floor to the bottom floor. The structure of the building looks like an elementary school with 5 floors so picture that. Its all cat6 so 328ft is the max. I looked over the project scope for the cabling and there isn't a clear indicator so have to do some fishing to see if anyone knows.

I know already it is going to s sh*t show.

fredrikjj

dmarcisco wrote: »

Lol that 1k may be grossly exaggerated I typed that when I got back from the site aggravated. I'm not sure what the actual length is but I'm sure it's in the triple digits especially from the 5th floor to the bottom floor. The structure of the building looks like an elementary school with 5 floors so picture that. Its all cat6 so 328ft is the max. I looked over the project scope for the cabling and there isn't a clear indicator so have to do some fishing to see if anyone knows.

I know already it is going to s sh*t show.

Well, unless whoever installed the cabling is completely incompetent, each individual one is tested and a part of those tests (you use a special tool that is plugged into both ends) is detecting the length. If length fails, the tests will fail, and it's not a valid cable installation. If there has been no testing of the cabling whatsoever, you have a bigger problem than where to place the networking gear. So before you do anything else, ask for this test report and verify that everything looks good.

Legacy User

I met a few lol so they are out there but yes definitely a great suggestion I already made that request earlier. The cabling company seems legit so I hope there installers don't half ass anything and they didn't just do things just to do it. The project scope made me a little worried as it said in bold letters they are not responsible for any network design or performance of any kind. idk we will see how this one plays out..

networker050184

Still don't understand why you think this is a bad design? Running everything back to a central point is a pretty common design.

BerkshireHerd

networker050184 wrote: »

Still don't understand why you think this is a bad design? Running everything back to a central point is a pretty common design.

You would run a direct connect ethernet from a 5th floor all the way to the first floor? I would think you would want each floor to have switch and a patch panel and daisy chain the switche back to first floor. What am I missing?

networker050184

Sure, patch panels and all that are great to have. Better for failure scenarios for sure and it would be my first choice as well. Plenty of buildings have home run designs though without issue. Especially something like a church where we probably aren't looking at mission critical infrastructure here.

fredrikjj

BerkshireHerd wrote: »

You would run a direct connect ethernet from a 5th floor all the way to the first floor? I would think you would want each floor to have switch and a patch panel and daisy chain the switche back to first floor. What am I missing?

It's easier to manage one device over several (and potentially cheaper). A counter argument might be that you have a single point of failure, but I don't think that's valid because unless you actually have two links into the building, you will have a single point of failure no matter what. I guess that in certain failure scenarios a specific floor would still have connectivity within that floor if another floor's switch failed vs. a single box failing and taking out the entire building.

Legacy User

networker050184 wrote: »

Especially something like a church where we probably aren't looking at mission critical infrastructure here.

Well its not your run of the mill church it is there HQ, there base of operations in the US. They have 2 huge conference rooms that can accommodate 50 people each with talks of setting up some sort of telepresence during meetings. I do not know yet and I doubt there is any mission critical applications at this time but looks like in the future they may my main concern is high availabitily,scalability and performance. If it was your neighborhood St. Patricks I wouldn't really care but you have to see this place it is rather impressive.

Russell77

I am sure MSP's have seen a lot worse than what you have going on here. If you did not design it I don't see ho it is a reflection on you. No one is going to reinvent the infrastructure at this point, cost way too much. Now if cables are too long then you may have to get creative and add switches on the floors. Cutting and reterminating. I would not cross that bridge unless I had too. I like core switching if possible. More switches=more problems in my voip world.

TheFORCE

I am with the rest of the people here that think you should definitely bring it up with your boss. Let him know that even though you will go through with the project as it stands at this point, you would rather have done it another way that is more efficient, more modular and easier upgradable in the future. I'm sure he will agree with you in respect, but ultimately, companies have a level of acceptable risk and a budget that they have to always go by, so in that regard, he is taking the responsibility.

PsychoData91

I can see benefits to either the direct homerun methodology (as long as the cables pass spec) and there could be plenty of room for the cabling. 5 floors would be around 75ft. In my classes we always assume 30ft (roughly 10m) of cabling to account for cabling on the other side of the wallport/patch panel. Meaning that you have 328ft-75ft-30ft=223ft give or take that could run away from the vertical cable run. The part of this that would be more annoying to me is that with runs this long it would be much easier to get degraded performance from running next to a power line or something. Not to mention the fact that any cable runs that would have to be re-run the ENTIRE distance. Or you would have to add gear to make it work.

I think that a MDS/IDS is generally a better approach allowing for things like redundancy. At our school we do fiber from several building first floor to several other buildings providing redundant paths. Within each building we do 2GB link from the MDS to the IDS on each floor. On some of the more heavy floors (with several computer labs and the networking education department) we have run 10GB links instead. From each floor we run cables out to the various classrooms and offices and such. If something happens to a cable, we can just replace the IDS-room link and don't have to worry about the connection back to home. If one part of the connection from IDS-MDS goes down, we can usually just replace the insert and the other half of the team just catches it in the mean time.

The way I see it, the IDS/MDS method is just a lot better. Going through 1-2 (one IDS and one MDS) switches to establish a call won't radically change anything VoIP-wise.

Also, you hopefully have something in these contracts/project paperwork that specifies they should have worked with you before putting something into place. If they do try to come back at you it is clearly not your fault since they didn't go with your recommendations.

Mr. Meeseeks

You also have to think about changes/additions in the future. How crappy would it be if they wanted to reconfigure the 5th floor and add a couple rooms? Instead of running 20 cables the length across the 5th floor into a closet... you now have to snake 20 home runs across the 5th floor, down to the bottom level and into the closet. Which would you rather do? Which would you rather pay for if you were the owner?

PsychoData91

Something else that I was thinking about and wasn't sure of: Is special cable required for a vertical run 5 floors long? I mean....Cat5e is only supposed to be allowed like 5 lbs of pull on it before it (theoretically) starts stretching and degrading the cable run.