[plug] Cable Management Software

[Adrian Woodley]

Patrick Coleman wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 3:06 PM, Adam Hewitt <ahewitt at theozhewitts.com> wrote:
>   
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I have been tasked with conducting an audit of our fibre network at
>> work. This is likely to take me a couple of months and I am likely to
>> feel like throwing myself off a building before its finished.
>> Therefore if I am going to do it now, I want to do it right to prevent
>> the next person from having to go through the same task...
>>
>> What I would like to do is put this information into a database of
>> some description that is accessible to anyone who is likely to be
>> making or coordinating changes to the fibre connections. Does anyone
>> have any recommendations for packages that do this out of the box?
>> Although I would prefer a LAMP setup to store and present this data, I
>> really don't have the time (nor the permission) to plan and execute it
>> all myself. I am really looking for something free, open source that I
>> can just start using.
>>     
>
> I've hit very much the same problem, except with CAT6 patches in
> building wiring closets (and fibre to some degree, I guess). Currently
> the documentation is in a pile of spreadsheets on my laptop, as I had
> a bit of a look a few months ago and wasn't able to find anything that
> would do it nicely.
>
> I was planning to write up something in django when I get some free
> time (hur), but if someone else has a recommendation that would be
> awesome.
>
> -Patrick
>   

While not a particularly elegant solution, couldn't a wiki be used to 
map/track this information?

Device/ports are pages, with the cables being the hyper-links between them.

Switches might be interesting to work out - maybe use individual anchors 
within the page for each switch-port?

Once the wiki is populated, a web/wiki trawler/mapper/analyser should be 
able to visualise the network map.

This is largely off the top of my head and there may well be some huge 
problem I haven't thought about. It is however easy to setup and start 
using, even at a personal desktop level.

Cheers,

Adrian