[plug] Cable Management Software

[Tim]

To be honest, not knowing how elegant these systems become, I don't
know how complex the system could be.
>From my basic understanding, any cable can only have 2 termination
points, at each end. And each termination point is a device that can
connect up to say 100 other termination points.
So what is the basic information you want stored?
One table for cables
Cable ID, End Point A, End Point B, Building Number, Etc etc

One table for devices
Device ID, Number of End Points, Location (Physical), Location
(Network, e.g. Address)

Then it's simply a matter of writing the interface to add cables and
devices and then write a few lookups to extract the data required. I
guess if there is advanced network routing information you want
stored, that could become a little difficult for doing simple SQL
lookups to work out routing tables, but I can see it's rather easy to
find all cables in Building X, or to check if there is a network path
between 2 points.
If what I've described is all it really is, then it should be fairly
simple to knock something up quickly. Otherwise, what other
information is needed?

Tim


On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Adam Hewitt <ahewitt at theozhewitts.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 3:57 PM, Adrian Woodley <Adrian at diskworld.com.au> wrote:
>> 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
>
> This was briefly discussed, however we have 64 sites, each with
> multiple patch panels (up to 9 at some sites) with each panel having
> up to 48 fibre patch ports....that is a *lot* of wiki pages using your
> method described...I know that you could then script around this as
> well, but something that can provide the fibre pathing for one device
> all the way through to the device on the other end (maybe through 5
> buildings and 7 pieces of cable) would be nice....or show all cables
> located in building X etc.
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>



-- 
Timothy White - Somewhere in Australia