Got a new job (cabling job, anyway)

I haven't been involved in a cabling job for three years or so...I'm pretty nervous. I've been working for the past year as a simple computer tech repairing dusty machines from morning to night. It's a high-end cable job and they are giving me a chance since I don't have as much experience...I'm suppose to pick up a hard hat, boots, punch/crimp tools, etc and arrive at the site tomorrow morning.

I've terminated ethernet cable before and I remember how to terminate wall jacks. In my last job we fished the cable through ceilings and down walls, so I'm not sure how similar this job will be. It's for a data center, so I'm hoping it won't be too intimidating. I don't want to drag anyone down.

I made a similar topic last week...but this time I'm wondering if there's anything I should be aware of? Procedures or whatnot.

KG

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Comments

moss12

Bro,

why are you going low as a cabling job ??? dont understand you brah!.

KGhaleon

Well, it's for a data center and I'm interested in working in a data center one day...so why not?
Seems like a decent idea.

KG

eltoro

Congratz on you job!!

+CNENT+

I don't work in the cable department, but I have to work with them at times. Where I work they walk you out if you cause an outage. I've seen them pull cable, and bring down an entire rack before. Watched them walk them out within the hour too. Seen one guy walked out, worked there 16 years, and they never had one problem with the guy.

These are raised floor data centers, so everything runs underneath the floor. All the network, fiber, power, ect.... Each server could have 2-4 nic cards, 2-3 power supplies. That's not counting all the switches, routers, firewalls, ect.... Our one building houses almost 5,000 servers alone. Add that with everything else, and it's easily 20k+ cables under the floor. Makes it difficult at times when removing one cable through all of that mess without disconnecting anything.

You haven't lived till you see someone bring down an entire circuit either. One circuit could be connected to who knows how many racks. That's priceless stuff there, cause you know they are literally $*#!ing there pants when these racks just start powering off all of a sudden! Of course now that I laughed about it, it's going to happen to me just watch.

KGhaleon

XD

Yes, now I'll be keeping an eye on my feet the entire time. They had me purchase boots, a hard hat and various other things...so I'm wondering what the heck I'll be doing. I can only assume that I'll be working in a construction zone.

KG

KGhaleon

Quick question:
A crossover cable is basically just an ethernet cable with a T568A and T568B on each end.
A straight-through cable is an ethernet cable with both ends set as a T568A or T568B. Can't be swapped.

Is that correct? I'm assuming we'll be terminating mostly straight-through ethernet cable, CAT5(e). Not sure which I'm expected to use for straight through...A or B?

KG

Darthn3ss

i use 568A for straight through.. but i'm pretty sure it doesn't make a difference? who knows.

snadam

Darthn3ss wrote:

i use 568A for straight through.. but i'm pretty sure it doesn't make a difference? who knows.

it really doesnt matter, but its always good to be uniformed. Its just a standard. If you want to get technical, you could have your wires setup any way you want, as long as they match on both ends (for straight through).

when I cabled, I tried to match the scheme of the site. But it was generally 568A.

Some general new job advice:
If youre ever unsure what they ask you to do on the site, do not be afraid to ask questions. We have a saying at work: "If you dont know, ask". It can save your job, or even more importantly, your life. Bosses would rather yell at you for asking how to do something than yell at you for something you f'ed up.

good luck at your new job, and hopeuflly you can get promoted out of cabling!

Aquabat [banned]

+CNENT+ wrote:

I don't work in the cable department, but I have to work with them at times. Where I work they walk you out if you cause an outage. I've seen them pull cable, and bring down an entire rack before. Watched them walk them out within the hour too. Seen one guy walked out, worked there 16 years, and they never had one problem with the guy.

These are raised floor data centers, so everything runs underneath the floor. All the network, fiber, power, ect.... Each server could have 2-4 nic cards, 2-3 power supplies. That's not counting all the switches, routers, firewalls, ect.... Our one building houses almost 5,000 servers alone. Add that with everything else, and it's easily 20k+ cables under the floor. Makes it difficult at times when removing one cable through all of that mess without disconnecting anything.

You haven't lived till you see someone bring down an entire circuit either. One circuit could be connected to who knows how many racks. That's priceless stuff there, cause you know they are literally $*#!ing there pants when these racks just start powering off all of a sudden! Of course now that I laughed about it, it's going to happen to me just watch.

yea if he's getting hardhats and boots, he's not working in a datacenter. i cabled fora little while. I doubt you'll be crimping any type of straight-tru or xover cable, you'll prolly spend most of the day on a power jack pulling cable and tying it down in between i-beams and the like. Also, terminating into jacks in walls.

have fun!

KGhaleon

Yeah, spent much of the day pulling cable along ceilings and organizing them on J-hooks, fishing them through walls and etc. It's a ten hour job and I'll be doing it 4 days a week with a four-day weekend, which I suppose is worth it.

I'm going to spend this time studying for more certs while making some money cabling. Only problems I had on my first day being that the guys I worked with threw out a lot of cable jargon and they lost me so many times throughout the day that it wasn't funny. The building layout was confusing as hell.

It wasn't fun.

I learned some things though, so I will have to try harder tomorrow with newfound knowledge.

KG

Aquabat [banned]

that is awsome man, soak it all up. I didn't like when i did cabling, but it helped me learn ALL aspects of networking, so in the end it was worth it. (besides getting ripped off by contract companies

)

dynamik

KGhaleon wrote:

Yeah, spent much of the day pulling cable along ceilings and organizing them on J-hooks, fishing them through walls and etc. It's a ten hour job and I'll be doing it 4 days a week with a four-day weekend, which I suppose is worth it.

I'm going to spend this time studying for more certs while making some money cabling.

Dude... where do you work? I'd run cables to have 8-day weeks!

KGhaleon

We're running not only the CAT 5e lines, but also the Coax lines for TV and WAP lines for wireless. The place will have both wired and wireless. Supposedly we may also be getting Fiber. The manager, director or whoever had to leave town on urgent business so we're stuck to fend for ourselves.

We have four floors to cable and we've finished most of the fourth floor. We're going to "dress" the cable tomorrow.

My bones hurt. Carrying Coax up several flights of stairs is kinda crappy.

I'll be making more money than my last job, and I only drive 20 minutes compared to over an hour before. Aside from the back-breaking, I may stick with it.

KG

moss12

Hey Brother,

I wanted to do cabling as well .I suggest for you to get into fibre optics splicing I see that offers higher salary have you also thought about designing cabling? Sorry if I offended you in anyways before by stating “why go low as cabler” I thought you’re getting into cabling for the whole purpose of avoiding customer contact , bi-polar still bothering you ? I truly believe you’re more qualified for the cabling business , anyways I wish best of luck in your endeavours.

KGhaleon

My bipolar will always bother me.

I'm not going to stick with cabling, I'll probably move up to working more with switches and network equipment later. Cabling, dedicated circuits, network design...it's an area I'm not familiar with, so I'm just wanting to give it a try.

I'm just taking in some new knowledge right now.

KG

nuglobe

+CNENT+ wrote:

These are raised floor data centers, so everything runs underneath the floor. All the network, fiber, power, ect.... Each server could have 2-4 nic cards, 2-3 power supplies. That's not counting all the switches, routers, firewalls, ect.... Our one building houses almost 5,000 servers alone. Add that with everything else, and it's easily 20k+ cables under the floor. Makes it difficult at times when removing one cable through all of that mess without disconnecting anything.

You run power under the floor? You should run all UTP above the cabinets. If you put everything under the floor, you would be retarded. It blocks the airflow from the CRAC units, and forces it up in some areas and not others. This leads to massive hot spots, and also is a great way to jack up your electrical bill. Oh, not to mention the noise given off of AC power cables will degrade the signal through your whole network.

You should be using a latter, not crawling under the floor.

nuglobe

Sry, I just reread that and I wasn't trying to sound like an arse.

KGhaleon

The other day we had to take *ALL* the cable, hundreds of cables(it seemed), and pull it out of the pipes leading into the telecom room. I was literally knee deep in cable in one room...I was quite hysterical.

Once in the hall, they told me to organize and roll up all the cable by myself, and I died a little inside before finishing. The guy that was helping me whenever I had trouble was gone to tend to his son, who was in a nasty car crash monday afternoon. The project leaders tore me apart because of my inexperience. I was dragging them down, so I volunteered to leave.

I'm going to hand in my papers tomorrow. Guess it wasn't for me.

KG

sprkymrk

KGhaleon wrote:

The project leaders tore me apart because of my inexperience.

They knew you were inexperienced when you were hired, didn't they?

Before leaving ask them if they would have liked to work for a bunch of butt heads when they were on their first job.

Don't be discouraged. You'll find a better job than this one.

moss12

Don’t worry KG you over qualified to be a cabler anyways, keep us updated.

Aquabat [banned]

yea, i hate cabling people. Basically the exact same thing happened to me. THey hire you knowing you ahve no experience, then they get mad. I think it's just an excuse because they don't need anyone

snadam

Aquabat wrote:

yea, i hate cabling people. Basically the exact same thing happened to me. THey hire you knowing you ahve no experience, then they get mad. I think it's just an excuse because they don't need anyone

+1 they are generally a different breed...One of the reasons why I got out of it.

When I was cabling, My Trainer would go get high during lunch every now and then, in front of his pregnant wife...yea...nice guy though....

If you want to stereotype them, I could relate them to construction guys in a way.

bighusker

I really wouldn't feel any shame about quitting a job like this. I can't imagine who would want to pull cable all day unless they really needed the money and had nowhere else to turn.

Depending on where you can find work, a helpdesk job would be a major step up from that crap.

KGhaleon

I've tried helpdesk, it's really no fun. My first helpdesk job was with Lockheed...and it was, like helpdesk on steriods. I already posted a topic a while back about that experience.

I'm not really confident about working an administrative position. I feel I need to at least get my CCNP/MCSA or something first. I'm pretty much lost as to where I should go at this point.

I grabbed some new cert books, so I'm going to try and focus on getting my 70-270 at this point.
Lately I've been reading a lot of books on networking, ethical hacking, IT forensics and other topics...so I'm having trouble defining my skills. "Jack of all trades, master of none" seems to be where I'm heading at the moment.

KG

garv221

Forget that job, cabling sucks. Move on

KGhaleon

I have. Right now I'm studying for my 70-270 from morning to night. I'll see if I can grab that sometime within the next month or two, so I can move onto a 2003 server certification.

KG