Three hours for one cable
A cabinet holds a hundred cables. A user in room 12 loses their link. The cables have no labels, so an engineer follows each one by hand. It takes three hours to find the one.
A label would have made it ten minutes. Small shortcuts at the start become large costs later.
Key words
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Workmanship | the quality of the work a person does |
| Labelling | a clear name on every cable, socket and port |
| Non-compliance | not following the rules, law or standard |
| Revisit | a second trip to site to put right a fault |
| Service level agreement | a contract that promises a level of service, often with a penalty if missed |
| Warranty | a promise to put faults right for a set time |
| Reputation | what people think of a firm |
| Network | devices joined so they can share data |
| Audit | an outside check that work and records meet the rules |
| Premature | happening earlier than it should |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can explain what poor labelling and missed testing cost a network and a business.
Starter: testing and records
Have a go
Starter: testing and records
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Poor labelling
A cable, socket, port or cabinet with a wrong label, or none, makes every later job harder. Troubleshooting is slower because you must trace each cable. Maintenance is slower and riskier because you may unplug the wrong one. Adapting the network for a new use is slower, because nobody knows what goes where.
The label costs pennies. The delay costs hours.
Worked example: one fault, two cabinets
| Step | Labelled cabinet | Unlabelled cabinet |
|---|---|---|
| Find the cable for room 12 | 5 minutes | 90 minutes |
| Test and fix it | 15 minutes | 15 minutes |
| Check nothing else was unplugged | 5 minutes | 60 minutes |
| Total | 25 minutes | 165 minutes |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
Failure to test all cabling
Untested cable may hide faults. A cable that is not tested can damage equipment, for example by sending wrong voltage down a miswired PoE link. It can cause premature breakdown of devices and cable. It can impede services on the network, with slow links and dropped calls.
Worst, the system errors are never identified, so nobody knows to fix them.
When the standard is not met
If cabling does not meet the standard, the network pays. It runs slower. It picks up more interference. It is harder to maintain or upgrade. The cable wears out sooner. It is also less secure, because faults and loose ends hide problems.
The business pays too, as the next table shows.