Let's see your wiring / switches / routers / wire management

Mike

Mike

Staff member
Mar 9, 2014
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New York
I'm about to rearrange my office and am thinking about putting all of my switches, routers, modem, etc., in the closet that already has custom shelves installed. I'm trying to think of some ideas to hide the wires or at least have some organization to them and figured I would see what everyone else is doing.

Let's see some pictures of your wiring, POE switches, routers, etc. What are you doing for wire management?
 
For cameras, I don't have enough wiring or equipment to validate a rack. But if you you have serious equipment and wiring, I would look into a 3 foot rolling fanned rack.
 
Here's a picture I took a while back of the back side of my main rack.. Ive got two full size racks in a purpose built basement server room with extra attention paid to sound proofing; each rack has its own 30A power... tho I dont pull near that. Currently it looks like a mess as I am pulling a ton of ethernet for cameras and security appliances.
IMG-20140429-00007.jpg

From the top:
Back side of 60A 12V Linear PSU
Grounding for Outdoor WiFi on grounding bar.
Comcast Business Router (60/10 w/small subnet)
BeagleBone VoIP/Automation Server & Ubiquiti Edgerouter PoE
Old pFSense Router (P4 3Ghz)
48p 3com layer3 10/100/1000 switch
24p PoE Midspan
Unused 24p 3com 10/100 switch
48p Patch Panel wired up to the rest of the property.

Unpictured:
Kenwood TS-2000 HAM Radio w/Rack Mount
Hackintosh Media Server
Pioneer AVR
Pair of Identical 6core 3.5Ghz Phenom servers w/16GB ram a 40Gbps fiberchannel link between them
Dell slide out Rack mount Monitor
2x APC 3000VA UPS
Several RM Fans & Half a rack of old servers I need to get rid of.
Tons of grounding equipment, commercial metal door w/2factor authentication, floor AC unit piped out small basement window.

Why yes; I did build my self a private data-center.. It ended up saving me money for renting space at remote facilities.. I work from home for big networking corp, so having everything I need local is really useful for development.
 
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The first home rack we get to see has to be biggest one, of course. We can all move on now!
/ just kidding ;)

Pretty sweet!
:headphones:
 
mahaha; sorry its not often anyone gives a shit about my server room; of course its got alot of time/money and attention so my wife hates it and glosses over the moment I bring it up.. I love it; finally I sleep at night without the whir of several compuers+network in the room with me and it was my first project after buying the house... I had been planing it for a looong time.

Since i work in the industry alot of the gear is stuff I picked out of the recyclers pile, took home and refurbished... they have a hard time getting rid of used datacenter equipment so if you can find a recycler with alot of it the'll give you racks and shelfs and patch panels and monitors for cheap if you give em some cash and they dont have to haul it any further.. I got both my UPS's for $150 total because shipping them away would have cost more, added $200 worth of new batteries and wam a $5k battery backup system back online for $350.. same story for that 200lb 12v power supply; very expensive precision device that was built like a tank and weighed a ton and nobody seemed to want to bite the cost to ship it anywhere.. cost me more in fuel to pick it up than I paid for it.

The gigabit switch was a freebie that I fixed by simply wiring the fans directly up to the PSU since the controller board failed.

It helps alot I live in a big city with a thriving tech industry; good luck finding a recycler with any good stuff in the middle of nowhere.
 
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my wife hates it and glosses over the moment I bring it up
Click to expand...
Keep in mind ALL women have a thing against wires by their very nature. The only way they can tolerate them is if the wires are sight unseen. I get bitched at plenty about it, as if all the shit in this house can run without wires! And I go through pains to hide every one of them. So bringing up a conversation about a rack full of wires with them...never gonna end well! LOL!
 
I hate messy wires; infact I got Comcast coming out this weekend to tie there service conduit into my nice new service box so it will be in conduit all the way to my server room for my internet pipe.. I always hated the external wires screwed to my brickwork but now that my security system will be pretty dependent on the internet connectivity it had to be addressed. I should of recorded that call trying to explain that there original install looked like shit, I was unhappy with it so I redid it and need them to come out and spend 10mins helping me hook there conduit to my conduit.

But yes; great pains and work goes into tucking/routing wires and it quickly becomes the norm; so heaven forbid I leave a wire temporarily exposed hah.. I will hear about it like she is constantly tripping over wires or something.

Every once and a while at a party someone will ask me how the hell I am running all this stuff; all they see is a TV and a few speakers floating on the wall, they notice the lack of cable boxes, video players and wires.. then I tell them its all wired to a rack in the basement and they begin to gloss over too.
 
Heh heh heh. I'm so glad I am not married.



Allow me to present ....







How to Wire a Bachelor Pad in Style
by bp2008


Lets start with the "server rack". The big one is my Blue Iris server. It runs an i7-3770k and 4x 3TB HDDs in RAID 5. Everything is protected by a beefy Cyberpower UPS.





On the shelf above that, we have the Gigabyte BRIX Pro GB-BXi7-4770R system running a second copy of Blue Iris. This little thing is actually faster than the behemoth below, but since it heats up like a brick oven[SUP]1[/SUP] and sounds like a dust buster when the CPU fan speeds up, it gets the easier job: recording 24/7 sub-streams. Also pictured: Vera Lite z-wave controller and custom cooling solution for the BRIX.

[SUP]1[/SUP] brix oven?

Moving along:



The DSL modem is hiding behind the Asus router, next to the 16 port gigabit switch, behind the dusty ol' Web Power Switch. If you look closely, you'll see the Intel NUC BOXDCCP847DYE that runs my Olympus SP-500UZ camera, among other things.

Since @Mike mentioned shelves, this is what I used here: http://amzn.com/dp/B00H2L32CI.



In the opposite corner of the room, I have a couple more switches. All wired network access for the rest of the house goes through here. This is also protected by a big CyberPower UPS, which is totally overkill for the load.





At the other end of the house is my old DVR closet from back in the day when I ran just 4 analog cams. It now houses a backup drive (WD MyCloud), another gigabit switch which uplinks to my garage, and yet another huge overkill CyberPower UPS.





This finally brings me to the garage, where 95% of the cameras are linked to. Here are some of the many cables strung along the wall.



Eventually they make it to the biggest switch I own. A massive 24 PoE-port Netgear:



A couple ToughSwitches power the remaining Ubiquiti gear.



And, you guessed it: another big CyberPower UPS!


(lower left corner)

This time the shelves used are: http://amzn.com/dp/B000OF1PKA





@Mike, as long as your rearranged office looks nothing like this, you're golden!
 
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haha, nice setup... thats pretty much what my place looked like when I brought my wife home for the first time... a little bit here; a little bit there, a whole lot all over.

Ever find a machine on your network you have no idea what it is or where it is at?

heres an overview of my home network, subject to change... mainly to help me remember things:
 

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nayr said:
Ever find a machine on your network you have no idea what it is or where it is at?
Click to expand...

Hah. No. House is far too small for that to happen. I forget where my cameras are on my camera grid all the time though.

Nice network diagram. That is waaay more complicated than my network :)
 
nayr said:
haha, nice setup... thats pretty much what my place looked like when I brought my wife home for the first time... a little bit here; a little bit there, a whole lot all over.

Ever find a machine on your network you have no idea what it is or where it is at?

heres an overview of my home network, subject to change... mainly to help me remember things:
Click to expand...
Wow!
Mega-props for the openwireless.org hotspot!
I recognize all of your host names except Muhr (Mohr?) and Segan (Sagan?).
 
solidstate said:
Wow!
Mega-props for the openwireless.org hotspot!
I recognize all of your host names except Muhr (Mohr?) and Segan (Sagan?).
Click to expand...

Given the context of the other device names I imagine you are right, and they are probably intentional misspellings?

I imagine my neighbors would love it if I ran an openwireless.org hotspot. The one and only wired internet provider around here is expensive and the competing wireless internet provider is slow and expensive.
 
bp2008 said:
Given the context of the other device names I imagine you are right, and they are probably intentional misspellings?

I imagine my neighbors would love it if I ran an openwireless.org hotspot. The one and only wired internet provider around here is expensive and the competing wireless internet provider is slow and expensive.
Click to expand...
When I first opened an openwireless.org hotspot I had someone use it constantly. I just cut the bandwidth. If they need a connection so desperately that they are willing to wait that much then I am fine with it. I just like the idea of spreading this meme. It is not for constant high bandwidth use, it is for fast checking of Email, maps, city guides, etc. when you are in a strange place. At least that is my opinion.
 
Yeah, that is understandable, though given WiFi's range nobody is going to find it! And besides, most people have smart phones and data plans anymore and little need for WiFi when they travel except to watch movies and such.
 
those are typos I never caught on the map; thats what I get for making this at 3am when I cant sleep :P

need spell checker in google drawings :D

I used to throttle the openwireless but my internet is much faster than any single wifi user can achieve at distance so I just turned it off and let em go at it...

Carl Sagan and John Muir; some of my favorite peoples.. hard names to spell sometimes ;)
 
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