Love the drinking fountain fail! I had a client that installed beautiful all-new aluminum direction signs around their building. One blocked a sprinkler and a nice wedge-shaped portion of the lawn turned nice and brown. Took them almost as long to fix it as it did to install them.
I install soundsystems in churches from time to time and we do a bit of audio over IP. I enjoy watching your videoes because they inspire me to do a good job and learn new strategies and practices for cable managment which can be very useful in audio systems. Thank you!
Your network cleanups are ASMR for us tech nerds. Always super satisfying seeing a network go from “functional” to absolutely stunning. Keep up the videos man!
There's something about the order of a combed cable bundle coming to to a server rack that is in and of itself clean and neat that just lowers my blood pressure. Everything is so messed up in this world, I find watching a methodical well laid out plan come together very soothing. Judging by all the comments, I'm not the only one. Thanks for the videos and keep up the good work!
I’ve been an IT guy for so many years, from back in the days of coax network headaches. It’s a real pleasure to see the calm after the storm, when you and your crew kill the mess!! Keep that awesome work, feeding the world with your knowledge!
I have all these fails and messes in my Network and as a Network engineer I ashamed very much after watching this video. Now I decide to fix it as soon as possible. Thanks
After four years on my current job, I have finally re-cabled and sorted every network closet, every server room and almost every corner of our office building. Seeing these fails reminds me of all the hours I invested in the process of tidying up what my predecessors neglected. Thanks a lot for your videos, tutorials and guidelines - fingers crossed for your channel to grow and a lot of new subscribers appreciating what you do! :)
As a Director of IT, it is always wonderful to see someone with pride in their work and clarity of focus. Wish you’d shown the before and after for these. :) Thanks for sharing
Derek, I think you nailed the small business wiring approach. I work with a lot of them, and as you guessed the business usually begins with one or two people, maybe a husband and wife or two guys with an idea. Years go by, the business grows, first to 5 or 6 staff, then 12 or 14, and then maybe 25 or 30 people employed. They never bother to assess their datacomm corner or closet, it's just the way it's supposed to be and they don't know it could be more organized and neat.
It's so easy to live with chaos. It starts small and before you know it, you've got a monster on your hands. And who wants to tackle that. One day, One day.
I worked for a very large corporate and most of the server rooms I went it, you'd come across somewhere in the room what looks like a kids "My first network" school project...
Back when I had a day job, I saw many of these fails. Fail 3 - Got to put the jack above the level of a normal pallet- say 4 or 5 feet. Patch cords are cheap and easy to replace. Fail 8 - We called it FIIW: F*ck It, It Works Fail 9 - We had a room like this. The building was wired by the renovation contractor and the jumpers were done by in house techs. Fail 10 - Network Archeology. After a new contractor took over from my shop I warned them that this switch in the middle of a former server room was still doing things, but I was ignored and they shut it down and were in the process of cutting the cables when they realized that half the NEW server room was off line.
I'm not a cable guy, but I'm looking to wire my home properly. I've learned so much from your videos, and like your philosophy of keeping it neat and clean.
Love your videos!! Very professional and informative!! My colleagues and I share your videos for inspiration and to set/ follow proper standards to improve the Low Voltage reputation in the field of various DIY Jokers 🤓😎
Thankfully the new office my employer moved into was pretty organized in the IDF. I then had the pleasure of removing 90% of all the racking. REALLY clean in there now!
While not to your business' level of care and quality, finding your videos led me to care more about my home network's and server's maintainability. Some 30 drops, 15 coax, couple servers, router, switch.....gets pretty jumbled over the years. No longer! Learned about cable combs from this channel, a simple 3d print later, a beautiful bundle running across the laundry room ceiling! New network rack, proper patch panel, 3d printed sleds for rack mounting router and fiber ONT, UPS,....feeling much better about it. Thanks for the videos!
I love watching cabling work, both fails, and pretty well done ones. Fortunately in the current office we live in is really superb cabled (copper, fiber, power, etc), and a lot of space to grow (we are using maybe half of 3 racks). We inherited it from other company, but clearly whoever they haired, or haired before they got there was a pro and proud of their work. Previous office was also good, but it was us who did most of the stuff (two sub-rooms for distribution, and then just some runs between them and to access point). Fortunately most runs were already put in place, and also pretty good (and splitting things into two sub-rooms made it even easier to manage). Now we have everything in one room, but cabling is top-notch (all switches at nice comfortable level, cable combing is top notch, colored, zip ties, labels, patch panels, cooling, fire suppression, door locks, etc). I added a custom map and printed sheet of what goes where, just in case we need to rework things or add some stuff, but it was pretty easy to trace everything, put few switches, and connect about 40-50 devices in (some computers, laptops, wifi, cameras, few small servers). We still do have some old stuff (switches, cable modems), but they are fully disconnected, and tucked into separate rack. Just so it does not clutter shelves, and we need to have some backup or run an experiments. And rack at home I have, is a bit of a mess too. Also too small (22 units high), which I tough would be enough. It never is enough ;D And low rack, makes it hard to work on it, because you need to have a chair or constantly bend to do something inside.
The Mayonnaise hot take was spectacular. I like what you're doing here, and it's been a good review for me. I used to do this work like 20 years back, and your videos always leave me feeling better. Keep up the great work.
Derek,i love your videos, i work for a nation wide company as a PM and i really want to get myself into the field but my company wont give me an opportunity to do so because they need me in the office, so ive been self training and doing gigs on my own after work, and i can say watching your videos has helper to be better thank you for putting them out and helping new struggling techs enter the field and tackle some projects i will keep watching and supporting your videos!
Fail #10 reminded me of a radio station the audio was first distributed via the punchblocks. Then years later the upgraded to audio over IP but when the upgrade was completed … they never removed the old punchblocks and wires. The wiring was undocumented and unlabeled….. I remember the cleaning crew to get a free outlet for their vacuum unplugged what they thought was a ups i4 rooms away and they actually killed power to the master control room for the am station
Congrats on all the stuff you've survived seeing over the last year. Your line of work is one I'd love to get into here in Scotland and I'm about to move into my first home and have plans for doing full networking and your channel has been invaluable to me in terms of best practices and ideas for how to organise my '11%%-of-an-idea' I have about cabling it all etc. so thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise, hope by next year you've either seen less fails (for the sake of your sanity!) or more (for the sake of our entertainment!)
- Too many different installers. " Let the next guy clean up this mess." - Too many people in too much of a rush because the next customer is yelling in their ear to come fix something. - Staff turnover at the customer's business which means the new guy who just gets two things connected to make something to work. Then quits 6 months later. - Why use a 12 inch cable when a 36 inch cable works ? Or just use whatever cable is closest. - Customers who are rushing installers to get it done so their staff can get back to work. - And of course, customers who don't understand that it costs money to do the job properly putting the installers under pressure to just get it done and get the hell out.
Whether you install from scratch, or fix a mess, your work seems to be done quite well, and I would imagine you are a respected boss/manager. Question for you, do you provide a map to the client for future maintenance? It seems you don't get into managing the switches, but at least a physical map would be awesome to be shown.
Been finally setting up my dream network room/closet recently and have come across your videos a few times now. I like seeing your commercial installs!
Watching your network rescue videos has been educational. Thanks for all the hard work of making them available for viewing. PS: I don't know if I can agree with your assessment of mayonnaise.
I remember how one day I saw a bunch of RG6 coaxial cable lying on the floor, and to my surprise, that cable was connected to the network. I decided that it would be interesting to understand the logic of the person who did it. As it turns out, the signal on the line was too strong, and to reduce it, someone threw 150+ feet of cable instead of a tiny attenuator.
#10 - cargo culting - is a fairly accurate picture of what our production software system looks like. I'm a senior dev/architect and every once in a while I take some unscheduled time to go on a rampage and remove legacy stuff no longer in use.
I always hate old stuff on new stuff since every once in awhile one of those old servers that you thought were "decommissioned" turned out not to be, and when you go to move it then all of a sudden end users are mad.
I'm working on cleaning up and documenting my network so it never becomes that bad. I have seen similar examples of what you've shown over the years. Sometimes the boxes are stacked in such a way you can't believe they haven't fallen over. How do people sleep at night? Great video and thanks.
Beginning my entrepreneurial journey as a designer and installer as taught me to always give room for future system expansion. I believe the failures like these are on facility managers and in-house IT-managers.
Love the fails! As a 38 yr Master Plumber here on the North Shore of Boston,, I run into the equivalent in my field. As in your field and in mine, it usually happens over time. Both of our trades keep people LITERALLY in business. No IT, no plumbing, no heating...? Thanks for the great content!
Number 10 and 11 gives me PTSD. We had so much left over stuff from old equipment that was never removed and I spent so much time having to rip out 3 old phone networks, intercoms, old cat5 cables on top of cat5e and cat6 cables, multiple internet feeds, cheap UPS’ all squeezed together for 30-40 years worth of IT equipment, right next to the hot water heater of all things. I had no choice but to deal with it and have the old crap pulled out as much as possible, but getting permission from management to spend money to do such things is typically harder than the work itself.
Worked a summer student job as a 'cable puller' for a small company installing network cables in schools. One old school had water underneath. They gave me black garbage bags to wear on my legs to wade through the water. Smh.
Truly validating to see cabling thousands of miles away from my current home in the US Midwest and see so many familiar sights lol. I've never been to Hawaii but I have SEENT these setups 🧐🧐🧐
Without any experience doing network cabling I wired my whole house. Although there is some issues with it, I have learned along the way what not to do. And I have used those lessons to do better for people I have help wire their houses.
It's refreshing to see these kind of videos with real world examples and instructional videos, I'm in IT but never had the chance to build a full network cabling as in the country I live mostly I know a friend that can do it situation or companies or vendors don't put much effort in these installations. And it's nice able to see these videos as makes it much easier to understand the know how, the why and see it in real world examples ! Thanks for the videos !!!
I have a homelab in my office here at home. I just CAN'T have a cable mess. It messes with me. My boss doesn't always care much at the main office, but every time I'm up there, I end up fixing the newest mess ;)
Another great video Derek, You have gotten me back into wanting to do some installs / cleanups of my own. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
I just subscribed to your channel a couple of weeks ago, and I look forward to seeing you fix messy networks. It's like therapy. We're going to have to fix ours at work soon too, so I get my kicks watching you guys do it. :)
I really enjoy watching network setups. There's lots to learn from them. I'm just starting and wish I could learn under the experts. It makes me want to organize my baby network. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
I've been studying at my college in the field of computer information systems for about a year I've done coding, networking, and hardware any tips for beginners like me? I like your video and use your content as a study guide.
Ugh, that one at around @10:00 ... I've been guilty of quickly adding a patch cable somewhere with the best of intentions to come back and tidy it up, only to never do that... but that looks like something a bird will raise a family in!
Every time I walk into a server room that is spaghettified, I think to myself, "Why are people like this? Why?" Working on a brand new mess right now! Extension cords to extension cords across the floor, and cables in literal knots.
Just found your channel last week. And find the channel very informative and entertaining. As an network engineer I don't really do the dirty work of the full wiring of an building. But sometimes I like to do it when it is an small change for like AP's in the suspended ceiling. Most of the times I rewire racks and replace equipment like routers, switches and AP's. And I like to keep things organized. I've been looking for another tester for an while to properly show length and breaks. Does this tester also supports finding breaks in cables?
I've been there before, a lot of these are caused by the attitude 'if it works, don't touch it', which as you say, is fine until it doesn't work, at which point all bets are off!
I think a lot of these "fails" are the case where management is just pushing to get things back up and running. While the IT department gets it up and running with the intent of going back to clean it up, they just get buried in work and the changes just keep piling on. I know I am guilty of the "I will get back to clean up later" syndrome.
I fully agree. I work in K-12 IT and a lot of our network cabinets are like this for this very reason. It also has to do with lack of time, lack of patience, lack of prioritization, etc. I've been at my job for nearly 4.5 years. There has been a lot of turn over over the past 15 years at this district in IT so people come in, "plan" projects, and leave or get fired or move elsewhere and things never get done, including network cabinet clean up. The best times for us in IT to clean up is during breaks but we often have a backlog of other projects that take precedence so it keeps getting put off.
Went to a bank years ago that had dumb terminals at the teller stations. All worked except one, and it “sometimes” worked right. To make a long story short, I traced the cable to a room that nobody knew about. It turns out the cable end was about 18 inches from where it should have been plugged in. So I plugged it in and they had no more problems with the terminal. I still don’t know how it “sometimes” worked, even though I witnessed it myself.
I think they may be one of the Amphenol brand subtypes from the 90’s that didn’t catch on. There were several ‘modular’ connectors meant to convert between phones and LAN but RJ-45 beat them all in the market. I could be wrong though, I don’t recognize them.
Love the drinking fountain fail! I had a client that installed beautiful all-new aluminum direction signs around their building. One blocked a sprinkler and a nice wedge-shaped portion of the lawn turned nice and brown. Took them almost as long to fix it as it did to install them.
Brian, get in touch with me at tcihawaii.com/contact-tci, I have something for ya
Announcing a winner, you got 48 hours to chime in or be replaced! 😀
@@tciproductions wish it were me!
I install soundsystems in churches from time to time and we do a bit of audio over IP. I enjoy watching your videoes because they inspire me to do a good job and learn new strategies and practices for cable managment which can be very useful in audio systems. Thank you!
I laughed out loud at the "proud owner" of such a disorganized mess of a network rack.
Oh, man, I'm dying on that one. 10:30 note the nice "service loop" in the power cord.
Your network cleanups are ASMR for us tech nerds. Always super satisfying seeing a network go from “functional” to absolutely stunning. Keep up the videos man!
Cargo culting, a new term for me and definitely happens at my work. Loved the descriptions you gave of each fail.
Just installed a patch panel and a couple of switches in my own rack! Found a few of your videos very helpful, thx
There's something about the order of a combed cable bundle coming to to a server rack that is in and of itself clean and neat that just lowers my blood pressure. Everything is so messed up in this world, I find watching a methodical well laid out plan come together very soothing. Judging by all the comments, I'm not the only one. Thanks for the videos and keep up the good work!
I’ve been an IT guy for so many years, from back in the days of coax network headaches. It’s a real pleasure to see the calm after the storm, when you and your crew kill the mess!! Keep that awesome work, feeding the world with your knowledge!
I have all these fails and messes in my Network and as a Network engineer I ashamed very much after watching this video. Now I decide to fix it as soon as possible. Thanks
After four years on my current job, I have finally re-cabled and sorted every network closet, every server room and almost every corner of our office building. Seeing these fails reminds me of all the hours I invested in the process of tidying up what my predecessors neglected. Thanks a lot for your videos, tutorials and guidelines - fingers crossed for your channel to grow and a lot of new subscribers appreciating what you do! :)
As a Director of IT, it is always wonderful to see someone with pride in their work and clarity of focus. Wish you’d shown the before and after for these. :)
Thanks for sharing
Proud to say the network guys at my company keep things nice and tidy. I love looking in the networking closets and admiring the work!
Derek, I think you nailed the small business wiring approach. I work with a lot of them, and as you guessed the business usually begins with one or two people, maybe a husband and wife or two guys with an idea. Years go by, the business grows, first to 5 or 6 staff, then 12 or 14, and then maybe 25 or 30 people employed. They never bother to assess their datacomm corner or closet, it's just the way it's supposed to be and they don't know it could be more organized and neat.
It's so easy to live with chaos. It starts small and before you know it, you've got a monster on your hands. And who wants to tackle that. One day, One day.
Nothing more satisfying than seeing a completely tidied up rack after having to deal with a complete mess for years😊. Thanks for the videos.
It gave me anxiety watching those network fails, awesome content. Can't wait for the next video.
I worked for a very large corporate and most of the server rooms I went it, you'd come across somewhere in the room what looks like a kids "My first network" school project...
The best ones are where they wanted to use every crayon color in the box!
Back when I had a day job, I saw many of these fails.
Fail 3 - Got to put the jack above the level of a normal pallet- say 4 or 5 feet. Patch cords are cheap and easy to replace.
Fail 8 - We called it FIIW: F*ck It, It Works
Fail 9 - We had a room like this. The building was wired by the renovation contractor and the jumpers were done by in house techs.
Fail 10 - Network Archeology. After a new contractor took over from my shop I warned them that this switch in the middle of a former server room was still doing things, but I was ignored and they shut it down and were in the process of cutting the cables when they realized that half the NEW server room was off line.
Stumbled upon your channel when I was planning my own home network. Genuinely helped me out so much.
These are some of my favorite videos on TH-cam. I'm relatively new to the field (student still) and seeing this stuff just keeps growing my curiosity!
That’s great! I’m the IT admin for a church and it’s been a mess trying to clean up a few networking closets here. Some PCs are running XP.
I'm not a cable guy, but I'm looking to wire my home properly. I've learned so much from your videos, and like your philosophy of keeping it neat and clean.
Love your videos!! Very professional and informative!! My colleagues and I share your videos for inspiration and to set/ follow proper standards to improve the Low Voltage reputation in the field of various DIY Jokers 🤓😎
We installed our network in our new house this past weekend and took a lot of what we did from your videos.
Thanks for the expertise.
Thanks for the video. Starting my own business so seeing these videos really help.
I have personally witnessed a patch panel in the wild that was labeled "To Everywhere." Very fitting for this video. Keep up the great work, TCI!
Thankfully the new office my employer moved into was pretty organized in the IDF. I then had the pleasure of removing 90% of all the racking. REALLY clean in there now!
Wow this was really eye opening about how the mess sprawls. It’s really interesting.
I love this channel. I could watch it for hours. Always amazed on how people see “organization” and how some feel that all is fine.
Good luck to all!
I've started watching your videos to improve my own network cabling and cable management skills. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience.
Im just now getting into the field of Networking and came across your videos. I am loving them so far. Thanks
I watch so many of these and have learned so much about a profession i’ll never call my own. I love the organization of it all. Thank you.
Derek, love your videos. I’m working on A/V cleanup at my church. Amazing how messy things get if they grow organically over 20+ years!
Nice cabling just makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Don't understand how people can sleep knowing their network is a sloppy mess of wires.
Thanks. I think the condo one was my favourite. I can’t imagine troubleshooting it and trying to coordinate a tidy up.
While not to your business' level of care and quality, finding your videos led me to care more about my home network's and server's maintainability. Some 30 drops, 15 coax, couple servers, router, switch.....gets pretty jumbled over the years. No longer! Learned about cable combs from this channel, a simple 3d print later, a beautiful bundle running across the laundry room ceiling! New network rack, proper patch panel, 3d printed sleds for rack mounting router and fiber ONT, UPS,....feeling much better about it. Thanks for the videos!
I love watching cabling work, both fails, and pretty well done ones.
Fortunately in the current office we live in is really superb cabled (copper, fiber, power, etc), and a lot of space to grow (we are using maybe half of 3 racks). We inherited it from other company, but clearly whoever they haired, or haired before they got there was a pro and proud of their work. Previous office was also good, but it was us who did most of the stuff (two sub-rooms for distribution, and then just some runs between them and to access point). Fortunately most runs were already put in place, and also pretty good (and splitting things into two sub-rooms made it even easier to manage). Now we have everything in one room, but cabling is top-notch (all switches at nice comfortable level, cable combing is top notch, colored, zip ties, labels, patch panels, cooling, fire suppression, door locks, etc). I added a custom map and printed sheet of what goes where, just in case we need to rework things or add some stuff, but it was pretty easy to trace everything, put few switches, and connect about 40-50 devices in (some computers, laptops, wifi, cameras, few small servers).
We still do have some old stuff (switches, cable modems), but they are fully disconnected, and tucked into separate rack. Just so it does not clutter shelves, and we need to have some backup or run an experiments.
And rack at home I have, is a bit of a mess too. Also too small (22 units high), which I tough would be enough. It never is enough ;D And low rack, makes it hard to work on it, because you need to have a chair or constantly bend to do something inside.
Finally someone to show what I see everywhere! I like to fix these wherever possible.
The Mayonnaise hot take was spectacular. I like what you're doing here, and it's been a good review for me. I used to do this work like 20 years back, and your videos always leave me feeling better. Keep up the great work.
Derek,i love your videos, i work for a nation wide company as a PM and i really want to get myself into the field but my company wont give me an opportunity to do so because they need me in the office, so ive been self training and doing gigs on my own after work, and i can say watching your videos has helper to be better thank you for putting them out and helping new struggling techs enter the field and tackle some projects i will keep watching and supporting your videos!
Fail #10 reminded me of a radio station the audio was first distributed via the punchblocks. Then years later the upgraded to audio over IP but when the upgrade was completed … they never removed the old punchblocks and wires. The wiring was undocumented and unlabeled….. I remember the cleaning crew to get a free outlet for their vacuum unplugged what they thought was a ups i4 rooms away and they actually killed power to the master control room for the am station
Congrats on all the stuff you've survived seeing over the last year.
Your line of work is one I'd love to get into here in Scotland and I'm about to move into my first home and have plans for doing full networking and your channel has been invaluable to me in terms of best practices and ideas for how to organise my '11%%-of-an-idea' I have about cabling it all etc. so thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise, hope by next year you've either seen less fails (for the sake of your sanity!) or more (for the sake of our entertainment!)
- Too many different installers. " Let the next guy clean up this mess."
- Too many people in too much of a rush because the next customer is yelling in their ear to come fix something.
- Staff turnover at the customer's business which means the new guy who just gets two things connected to make something to work. Then quits 6 months later.
- Why use a 12 inch cable when a 36 inch cable works ? Or just use whatever cable is closest.
- Customers who are rushing installers to get it done so their staff can get back to work.
- And of course, customers who don't understand that it costs money to do the job properly putting the installers under pressure to just get it done and get the hell out.
Really appreciate your attention to detail. I have seen some messy telco closets but none like what you have shown.
Fail #9 broke my heart, it was like a job done by two completely different crews.
Whether you install from scratch, or fix a mess, your work seems to be done quite well, and I would imagine you are a respected boss/manager. Question for you, do you provide a map to the client for future maintenance? It seems you don't get into managing the switches, but at least a physical map would be awesome to be shown.
I began to follow your channel a week ago, but its really awsome and useful for me as a IT guy. Thanks for your work!
I discovered your channel about a month ago, looked at 5-6 videos, and I honestly enjoyed myself watching (and learning) Good job!
Been finally setting up my dream network room/closet recently and have come across your videos a few times now. I like seeing your commercial installs!
Watching your network rescue videos has been educational. Thanks for all the hard work of making them available for viewing.
PS: I don't know if I can agree with your assessment of mayonnaise.
All your videos have helped me doing cleaner work. Thank you.
Congrats on passing the year mark, I've really enjoyed watching the chaos!
I remember how one day I saw a bunch of RG6 coaxial cable lying on the floor, and to my surprise, that cable was connected to the network. I decided that it would be interesting to understand the logic of the person who did it. As it turns out, the signal on the line was too strong, and to reduce it, someone threw 150+ feet of cable instead of a tiny attenuator.
#10 - cargo culting - is a fairly accurate picture of what our production software system looks like. I'm a senior dev/architect and every once in a while I take some unscheduled time to go on a rampage and remove legacy stuff no longer in use.
I always hate old stuff on new stuff since every once in awhile one of those old servers that you thought were "decommissioned" turned out not to be, and when you go to move it then all of a sudden end users are mad.
I'm working on cleaning up and documenting my network so it never becomes that bad. I have seen similar examples of what you've shown over the years. Sometimes the boxes are stacked in such a way you can't believe they haven't fallen over. How do people sleep at night? Great video and thanks.
Love your videos showing how a little hard work and a can do attitude you can fix poor networking work man ship and make something beautiful.
I loved watching all these fails and with working in the field it is so relatable. Love the videos and work you guys do.
Beginning my entrepreneurial journey as a designer and installer as taught me to always give room for future system expansion. I believe the failures like these are on facility managers and in-house IT-managers.
Planning on wiring outdoor cameras and I'm trying to learn how to ground the shielded patch panel at my home, love your videos!
Love your work! And the detail like the grounding aspect. I would have never thought of that!
I cant believe the lack of care in some of these I'm not even in networking yet but my amateur jobs take so much more care than these. Great video.
Love the fails! As a 38 yr Master Plumber here on the North Shore of Boston,, I run into the equivalent in my field. As in your field and in mine, it usually happens over time. Both of our trades keep people LITERALLY in business. No IT, no plumbing, no heating...? Thanks for the great content!
Number 10 and 11 gives me PTSD. We had so much left over stuff from old equipment that was never removed and I spent so much time having to rip out 3 old phone networks, intercoms, old cat5 cables on top of cat5e and cat6 cables, multiple internet feeds, cheap UPS’ all squeezed together for 30-40 years worth of IT equipment, right next to the hot water heater of all things. I had no choice but to deal with it and have the old crap pulled out as much as possible, but getting permission from management to spend money to do such things is typically harder than the work itself.
This was fun to watch. My wife is worried that the network I'm planning in our new house will look like some of these
At one of my previous companies, the server room was "purpose built" but with wooden racks. Total cabling disaster.
Nice to see that things are equal around the globe.
Greetings from the other side of this planet (Germany)
Worked a summer student job as a 'cable puller' for a small company installing network cables in schools. One old school had water underneath. They gave me black garbage bags to wear on my legs to wade through the water. Smh.
Some of these reminded me of how our server racks looked when I started working at my current job. Very happy to say they don't look that bad anymore!
Great video! These cable fails really highlight the importance of proper network infrastructure.
Truly validating to see cabling thousands of miles away from my current home in the US Midwest and see so many familiar sights lol. I've never been to Hawaii but I have SEENT these setups 🧐🧐🧐
Derek, you really need to make this a regular feature. Every year or six months do another edition, especially the hilarious ones like #8.
Without any experience doing network cabling I wired my whole house. Although there is some issues with it, I have learned along the way what not to do. And I have used those lessons to do better for people I have help wire their houses.
Very interesting and the ones where you rebuild / fix set ups are particularly rewarding
It's refreshing to see these kind of videos with real world examples and instructional videos, I'm in IT but never had the chance to build a full network cabling as in the country I live mostly I know a friend that can do it situation or companies or vendors don't put much effort in these installations. And it's nice able to see these videos as makes it much easier to understand the know how, the why and see it in real world examples !
Thanks for the videos !!!
I have a homelab in my office here at home. I just CAN'T have a cable mess. It messes with me. My boss doesn't always care much at the main office, but every time I'm up there, I end up fixing the newest mess ;)
Another great video Derek, You have gotten me back into wanting to do some installs / cleanups of my own. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
I appreciate seeing the messes you've experienced. Makes the messy work I've been working on improving not look so bad in comparison 🤠
I just subscribed to your channel a couple of weeks ago, and I look forward to seeing you fix messy networks. It's like therapy. We're going to have to fix ours at work soon too, so I get my kicks watching you guys do it. :)
I really enjoy watching network setups. There's lots to learn from them. I'm just starting and wish I could learn under the experts. It makes me want to organize my baby network. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
i love it when these type of setups have issues, then whoever has to trouble shoot is ata loss
I've been studying at my college in the field of computer information systems for about a year I've done coding, networking, and hardware any tips for beginners like me? I like your video and use your content as a study guide.
Network rehabs are the best content for us IT guys I think. And the longer the video the better. Keep up the food work
The before and after photos on this channel are so satisfying.
Ugh, that one at around @10:00 ... I've been guilty of quickly adding a patch cable somewhere with the best of intentions to come back and tidy it up, only to never do that... but that looks like something a bird will raise a family in!
Every time I walk into a server room that is spaghettified, I think to myself, "Why are people like this? Why?" Working on a brand new mess right now! Extension cords to extension cords across the floor, and cables in literal knots.
"Microcosm of every office" , you said it.
Just found your channel last week. And find the channel very informative and entertaining.
As an network engineer I don't really do the dirty work of the full wiring of an building.
But sometimes I like to do it when it is an small change for like AP's in the suspended ceiling.
Most of the times I rewire racks and replace equipment like routers, switches and AP's. And I like to keep things organized.
I've been looking for another tester for an while to properly show length and breaks.
Does this tester also supports finding breaks in cables?
I've been there before, a lot of these are caused by the attitude 'if it works, don't touch it', which as you say, is fine until it doesn't work, at which point all bets are off!
I think a lot of these "fails" are the case where management is just pushing to get things back up and running. While the IT department gets it up and running with the intent of going back to clean it up, they just get buried in work and the changes just keep piling on. I know I am guilty of the "I will get back to clean up later" syndrome.
I fully agree. I work in K-12 IT and a lot of our network cabinets are like this for this very reason. It also has to do with lack of time, lack of patience, lack of prioritization, etc. I've been at my job for nearly 4.5 years. There has been a lot of turn over over the past 15 years at this district in IT so people come in, "plan" projects, and leave or get fired or move elsewhere and things never get done, including network cabinet clean up. The best times for us in IT to clean up is during breaks but we often have a backlog of other projects that take precedence so it keeps getting put off.
Why don't you see elephants hiding in trees?
Because they're so good at it! LOL
Great video!
I once saw an installation where they had one rack for three switches and another for the patch panels. I think they used 3m cables between them.
It's cool to see the fails, and seeing how your team resolved would be interesting! Thanks!
Went to a bank years ago that had dumb terminals at the teller stations. All worked except one, and it “sometimes” worked right. To make a long story short, I traced the cable to a room that nobody knew about. It turns out the cable end was about 18 inches from where it should have been plugged in. So I plugged it in and they had no more problems with the terminal. I still don’t know how it “sometimes” worked, even though I witnessed it myself.
This video gave me flashbacks of my 30 years in IT
I like how you acknowledged how some of them may have started out before they got to this point. Lol at the mayonnaise.
#9 what kind of connectors are those? I mean the one at 12:01 - green cable with milky white connector?
I think they may be one of the Amphenol brand subtypes from the 90’s that didn’t catch on. There were several ‘modular’ connectors meant to convert between phones and LAN but RJ-45 beat them all in the market. I could be wrong though, I don’t recognize them.
I do love this type of content with the before and after photos and videos.
Sometimes it’s just hard to convince management to spend more money to do it right, when less quality is cheaper.
Wow some of these look tough! I just re-did my own home network so it’s not going to be on your list anytime soon. Agree about mayonnaise vs butter!