How do you get wiring closet experience?

Hey guys, I was looking over the network gear at my work and I was wondering how does one go about learning more about wiring and terminating? By this I mean patch panels, 110/66 blocks, 25/50/100 pair, etc. I mean I learned about all this stuff in my Net+ and CCNA courses, but how do you go about actually getting practice with this stuff, or is it just really not that big of a deal since most of it is already in place?

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ccnpninja

or is it just really not that big of a deal since most of it is already in place?

Allow me to say the following: Never, ever, think this way again if you want to improve your career. This is the road to complacency in IT.
Chunk it down. Begin somewhere. begin with drawing a visio for instance about network equipment. Start small, grow big..

Qord

Honestly, I think learning by doing is the best for this particular scenario. Buy yourself a termination kit (something cheap to learn with), a bulk amount of RJ45 jacks, a couple hundred feet of cat 3/5/6, a patch panel, and start doing it. Since the intent is to learn how to do it, stay cheap. There's no reason to waste good money on this unless you've got it like that.

If you're really motivated, make little projects out of it. For example, get a patch panel and secure it somewhere (put a corner under a couch leg?) just to keep it in place, and make a cable run with a dozen or so wires terminating 6 feet away. Or break it up and have half terminate at 6 feet and snake 6 more another 12 feet. Just play with it until you get the hang of it really.

YFZblu

^ Indeed - This can be lab'd as well

mapletune

thats what im planning to do.

get a rack closet, and wire it up with cable management.

QHalo

Honestly, anyone can learn how to terminate. The thing that most people never learn is how to dress cabling and make things look really good. Don't skimp on the finer details.

Claymoore

ccnpninja wrote: »

Allow me to say the following: Never, ever, think this way again if you want to improve your career. This is the road to complacency in IT.

Equally important - don't waste your valuable training time on skills that have no benefit to your career. Do you want to be writing the switch and router configs for the network? If you do, then you will be too expensive to be patching in cables, let alone pulling them and punching them down.

My first real IT job out of college was with a small reseller whose primary lines of business were structured cabling and PBX installations, . Since the company was small, everyone learned how to pull cable in case we needed help on a big job. I spent the first few months pulling and terminating cable in all kinds of buildings before moving on to supporting various Novell implementations. In almost 14 years since I left that company, I think I have picked up a punchdown tool once and the only cable I have pulled and terminated was in a couple of the houses where I lived.

it_consultant

zrockstar wrote: »

Hey guys, I was looking over the network gear at my work and I was wondering how does one go about learning more about wiring and terminating? By this I mean patch panels, 110/66 blocks, 25/50/100 pair, etc. I mean I learned about all this stuff in my Net+ and CCNA courses, but how do you go about actually getting practice with this stuff, or is it just really not that big of a deal since most of it is already in place?

Most of this is done by contractors and or phone guys. If you really want to learn, talk to an old school phone guy. Not some guy that just got his CCNA/Voice, the ones that came up on the old Ma'Bell systems. I am talking about digital cards the size of briefcases. Where you need to program in the block number in order to assign an extension. You will learn some stuff...

her.yang

Depending on where you work, most of the wiring and patching will be done by the junior technicians who may be working at the helpdesk. All that involves is taking a pre-made CAT5E patch cable and patching it from a labeled 110 block to a switch in a wiring closet in order to activate a port on a wall for some customer who may or may not have checked to see if that port was already active. As for the actual terminating, cabling, and certifying? That's mostly already done by contractors, especially if you're working in a campus environment. If any of it needs to be re-worked, you put in a separate work order to--like some of the other members already mentioned--the phone/infrastructure guys and they re-test and re-terminate it for you. In the world of IT networking there's a clear distinction between the guys who do the wiring of the infrastructure (we call them 'cable dogs') and the networking/administrative personnel. Don't know why this is but it is.

Darthn3ss

I interned at my college's help desk and got the chance to work with their wiring guy on a few occasions. Got to run cable to new classrooms, and even had the pleasure of troubleshooting a payphone issue.

zrockstar

Thanks for all the great responses guys. I think I'll do like Qord said and just pick up a few supplies. It sounds like maybe I won't be handling much wire in the future, but if the chance ever comes up I don't want to look like a bumbling idiot with a punchdown in my hand.

Cisc0kidd

Perhaps buy a used 110 and 66 block off of eBay to practice?

VAHokie56

Interesting responses. While I agree you should always strive to improve and learn more, I will say at both enterprise environments I have worked at and currently work at we do zero terminating. The customer pays contractors to run all of our fiber and copper we focus on the Cisco environment and I think that is the norm for most large campus style enterprise environments. However you need to make cool with the cable guys so you can get your runs terminated in a timely fashion!

lantech

I've seen CCNPs having to run and terminate cables in cabinets. It all depends on where you work. If you work in somewhere like a data center then the network engineers might be running cables in between cabinets and racks. So don't expect that just because you're a network engineer means you won't be running cables.