Many business owners believe that the appearance of a communications cabinet/room isn’t really a big deal – but it should be.
90% of the customers we work with allow their communications cabinets to get into a tangled state, making it extremely difficult to complete basic maintenance tasks and inspections.
Our cabling installers here at Puffin appreciate that it can be tempting to simply add your newest connection into an open port and think nothing of it as it saves time. However, with a little extra effort, your comms room cabinets can be organised, easily maintained and a lot easier on the eye.
Problems You Will Come Across
If you neglect your cabling set-up, it will inevitably come back to cause you and your business problems. There are many issues that you will encounter with untidy cabling. These are just a select few that seem to consistently crop up.
Increased Downtime – In amongst all of that untidy network cabling and power leads is your ISP/Broadband line. This is your Internet Service Providers Broadband line and provides you with access to the largest network on the planet – the internet. If the ISP line becomes tangled and broken, you will experience slower connection speeds and increased downtime.
Have you noticed slower speed recently? How’s your comms room cabinet looking?
Combined Networks – In most cases, businesses and educational facilities such as schools and colleges have a number of networks available. These are usually broken down into Public and Private Networks.
Public networks contained information that is accessible to anyone. The files and documents that are stored in Public networks are low risk and are available for various uses. However, documents stored on a Private network are a lot more valuable. They contain confidential information such as personal information, server information, passwords and more.
Private networks should be kept secured at all time to prevent a rise in hacking or leaking of valuable information.
Untidy cabling can cause two networks (Private and Public) to combine. This can allow access to restricted websites, promote confidential files and even expose user passwords.
Further Problems/Damage – Unless a cabling is maintained and correctly installed, it will only get worse. Unprofessional or inexperienced network technicians are the most prone to committing the same mistakes over and over again.
Any form of data cabling installation should be done by an experienced technician.
Fire Hazards – Overheating when a storage cabinet is full becomes a serious problem and one that can easily cause a serious fire. Comms room cabinets are usually combined with power adaptors and extension leads to supply power to the unit – this can be a worrying site.
On many occasions we see extension leads plugged into extension leads in order to gain more length for cables.
Instead of increasing the risk of a fire – consider installing the right size cabling unit.
Recap
Overall there are many reasons for poor cabling management. However, there are a number of things that you can do to make sure that your staff remain safe and your system works around the clock.
Naturally if wires are crossed and intertwined, reduced connection speeds will become an issue. Even more so when one of those cables are your ISP’s broadband line.
Reduce the risk of Public and Private Networks becoming combined with the correct cabling installed.
Act early and have the data cabling refurbished and the existing cabinets organised for easy maintenance and improvements.
Have the correct size data cabinet installed and prevent the usage of multiple extension leads for power. This dramatically increases the risk of an internal fire.
