My wife and I run a coworking focused design consultancy and we help a lot of people get set up with systems, layout, operations and the like. Part of this is network infrastructure and I need a variety of pictures to use as examples. I’m looking for pictures of where the internet comes in to your space and the various routers and switches that are usually located right there.
You can see where I’m going with this on the network primer we have posted on our website: https://kanawha.design/network101. You can also see at the bottom of the page a picture of me standing with a large installation we did for one client. I’m looking for installs big and small. If your data closet is clean or messy, I’d like to see it. And yes, I understand you probably have mops and boxes in the way. Take pictures of that too!
Thank you everyone,
Jacob Sayles
Technical Director
Kanawha Design Studio kanawha.design
Hey Jacob, hope all is well. Love your business model.
I work for a company called Blink Media which produces a ton of photo and video content for coworking spaces including WeWork. Would be great to connect and see where our paths align.
Here are a few from when we set up our rack and cabling in our 2nd location. We did it together with some members in our community who were super into networking and gear, turned it into a collaborative design and implementation effort. We also designed the cable rails shown that cost around $150 in total material instead of the $5,000+ quotes I was getting for the typical overhead trays.
The cabling was only done once, but thankfully, we were able to use it to switch to Unifi gear, which we’ve been in love with ever since.
The network cable punchdown work is painful and tedious, but nowadays it’s easy to get “passthrough” patch panels and wall panels, so it’s as simple as putting a normal ethernet end on the cable and then plugging that end into the back-side of the patch panel. We did this when we moved in 2016, and it was a dream.
We also switched from the strapped overhead install to J-hooks, which was both easier to install and easier to add more wires to later on.
These are excellent examples! Thank you. I like the makeshift cable tray although you are right about the J-hooks. The thing I like about running the bundles in parallel though is that you know exactly where they are going. In one big bundle this distinction is murky. Colors are good too. This way means you need to be OK looking at the wiring (which I love). I’ve had clients prefer trays to hide the wiring though.
I could still use a few more photos if anyone else wants to contribute.
I never thought anyone would ever ask! I love a good, neat, well-cabled rack
Here are 3 shots I do like…
I’m a big fan of putting the switch right in the middle of the patch panels - and then using VERY short (ideally 20-30cm) patch leads - which avoids the spaghetti in the 4th, hideous shot! That 4th shot is now better - and could be super neat IF I’d used a 48 port switch with ports all the way along it - rather than having to have cables from the edge into the middle
