The First Snag

The first glitch was rather unexpected. I decided to set up remote access to the server so I wouldn’t have to walk across the hallway. I plug a patch cord into the socket and watch as the server refuses to respond to pings, while the port indicator light on the switch blinks at a steady interval. I suspected the cable, the socket, the quality of the crimping… Until I thought to check the cable’s wiring scheme. Turned out they had been crimped according to an arbitrary scheme, as long as both ends matched. Why cables crimped the same way worked fine in the old network with simple switches but refused to work with the fancy new one remained a mystery. But I did get plenty of practice re-crimping cables to the standard wiring scheme. It’s not the connectors I feel bad about so much as the 15 wall sockets. They’re installed in hard-to-reach spots, the wires keep breaking off — over the course of a week I only managed to redo 6 of them.