So today I set out to finish the first stage of this structured wiring business. It was supposed to be a relatively simple ordeal - last night I had spent an hour or so down in the basement closet on a ladder crimping Cat 5e connectors to the ends of all the cables I had run -
To run the cables into the house I had used a piece of scrap PVC plumbing, drilled through the drywall from in the crawlspace and caulked around the PVC to hold it in there.
But then the first thing I discovered this afternoon when I set out to start was that all the patch cables I already own were wired the Type B way while I had arbitrarily decided to wire all of my stuff (ports and crimped connectors both) Type A. Good times. Should have checked beforehand. Duh.
Oh well, so that meant I had to rewire all the ports. Then cut off all the connectors I fastened last night and redo. Not the worst thing I guess. So this is what the one in Julian's bedroom looked like (labeling and all) after rewiring and with that decora quickport plate -
The two blanks will likely be RG6 cable in/out.
But once all that was done, I tested - made some more patch cables with my crimping tool, double-checked the ports and the connectors, etc. etc. etc. Had to run two surge protectors cos of the stupid transformer plugs for the two switches, router/switch and modem (cos I also needed to plug in the backup drive and Mac servers) and then I started plugging everything in -
I had drilled a 2" hole in the shelf to stuff all the cables through and then back up - as opposed to cutting them off to length (I had guessed how much I needed when doing the cabling for each run - better to have too much than get all the way across the house and realize I didn't have enough). That way I have extra cable if I ever need it (and with, well, all my shirts back on that side of the closet that wiring mess is pretty well hidden anyway) -
In order to accommodate two Mac servers and a monitor (which is probably something like a hundred pounds), I had to get creative ... the height between the shelf and the ceiling was perfect in that it was just enough room to fit a G4 tower, but that meant I couldn't reinforce it with some 2x4s underneath (cos that would raise it an inch and a half and then the G4s wouldn't fit). So I drilled and found some studs (I could see the crap drywall tape and nails giving away where they were) to secure some shelf brackets underneath and help support the weight of all the computer gear -
Then it was just a matter of heaving them up there and connecting the firewire backup drive to the main server (Titanium) and both it and the backup/auxiliary server Radon (my former Logic workhorse) to the switch -
(where I spent cramped up most of the day ... )
The monitor is up there for now, but likely won't stay. I can control both the Macs via a VNC client on my laptop so they don't need a keyboard/mouse or monitor. So now everything is humming down there instead of, well, in my bathroom. It sounds much more natural to hear the sound of hard drives spinning away in a closet.
And, uhh, someday I'll have my actual bedroom closet back and - well - won't have to use this one anymore. I'm just happy not to have to step on/over the cable that ran from the bathroom out to the living room corner that I had gotten used to doing for the last year or two. Good times.
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So the really frustrating part of the day came when I went to connect the Mac Mini and it - uhh, didn't work. It said the ethernet cable wasn't connected. But. It. Was.
So I tested the same port/cable configuration on Julian's iMac. Worked fine. And the LG ethernet TV. Ditto. So WTF.
As in - WTF!!!???
Ooh boy.
Oh, and the new G5 ... same thing. No ethernet cable even though it was connected. And with the whole Type A/Type B fiasco it took me longer than it should have to realize maybe it was an OS deal instead of maybe me mis-wiring one of the ports or connectors. But finally I Googled around and discovered pretty quick people on the Apple forums complaining about the same problem - an unconnected ethernet cabled despite it being plugged in.
And after perusing some of the responses it looked like the resolution was to manually dumb down the port from gigabit (1000BaseT) to 100BaseT. But why? I have gigabit switches ... and all my Macs were set up on gigabit before. The only thing that I changed now is instead of the wires running directly from each switch to each Mac - now they run from the switch to a port, and then a patch cable from the port to each machine.
I have no idea ... I'm going to be Googling some more to find out why cos it sorta irks me. I want gigabit. But oh well. Reminded myself even though the day was sorta crappy cos of that, a crappy day for me would be a stellar one for far too many people ... always try to keep some perspective.
And I know I've said I hate plumbing but - I think I hate networking even more. Or at least as much. And when I said how I hated plumbing I mentioned how I never use that word. Except for plumbing. And now for networking.
And by no means is this finished - I plan on installing an actual panel for this stuff, and like I said I still have more Cat 5 and RG6 and possibly speaker wires to run ... but the stuff is out of the bathroom now so I can get to gutting the rest of it. That'll be fun! No, really.
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