Say you need to go and investigate a switch port with a connection issue in a Telecommunications Room and you are told the cable is labelled with far-end termination details. (Hopefully!) When you arrive at the switch, it’s no surprise that the label has slipped into the veritable rats nest of cables, or even worse, it has fallen off and is sitting on the floor with at least a dozen other homeless cable labels. You start thumbing through the cables trying to identify its correct path and follow the cable all the way down the line to determine where it terminates. Success! You eventually get to the other end of the cable and notice it has a loose connection. You reseat the connection and “Voila!” the problem is fixed. Or so you think. You get back to your desk to finish your cup of coffee and… lo and behold, there are two new connection issues logged in the same Telecom Room. Hmmm, now how did that happen? Could this have been avoided? If accurate and complete patching documentation was being maintained for the cable plant, you could have been provided with not only the switch port but also the patch panel number and port to which the suspect cable connects. This would have negated the need to rely on the label and would have avoided thumbing through the cables and physically tracing the path in and out of tight areas, which could cause additional problems. If this is something that’s of concern to you, you can download our free guides to Best Practices for Inside Plant and Outside Plant, which addresses these issues and more. Would Cable Labels help much?
