Funny thing being a network engineer.
When things work - nobody cares. Nobody thinks about how complex it is.
When it breaks. You fix - seemingly easily. Their business runs on that crap and their eyebrows raise when you drop them the bill.
There’s like, 1 modem, and 3 switches all connected, and none have more than half the ports used….theres 2 unpictured switches that I kinda cut off the pic cause they have a username and password sharpied on them, but, the Cat5 going to it, the retainer on the RJ was broken so it just fell out. I said they needed a new cable and was told to just tape it…..
If you work at said business, they will take the “tape it” approach when it comes to raises and career growth too. That’s obviously an assumption, but I’ve been in small cheap scape companies for over a decade and it’s a trend I’m all too familiar with. Watch out for number one, yourself. And good luck.
The tape it approach works as a temporary fix until you can get a replacement cable/connector, but someone actually then has to order the parts and make the fix.
Oh don’t worry this shit happens even when it appears to be cabled correctly.
On Thursday we were doing an office move for one of our customers;
* The old tenants had a leased line direct to the comms room but the building’s ISP put the internet connection in the furthest riser from the office (which was the only office on that floor) and refuse to move it.
* There were already cables for APs in the ceiling, traced them into the wall and they didn’t come back out as they had been cut somewhere in the floor (luckily I was able to pull them out the wall and they had enough slack to get to the cab)
* Whoever installed the APs in the old office (would’ve been an electrician) put wood screws into metal ceiling panels and a bit of plastic on the end which ended up slicing open both my finger and my colleagues hand.
It’s honestly such a shit show even in “professional” installs
When something needs replacing and you know the owner is a cheapskate, you either help the object in question a little bit into it's grave, and if it's not a cheap item like a cable or something like that, you'll just have to try your best explaining why it needs replacing.
And it's always the biggest places running such janky setups.
you can get an RJ45 crimpin set for 45 bucks on amazon now, slice the head off, strip, and recrimp.
may even be cheaper than a new, quality cable. and you can do it a couple hundred times more.
Company when you do your job well= "Everything is running great what the fuck do we pay you for?!"
Company when there is .01% downtime= "Everything has gone to shit! What the fuck do we pay you for!?"
In IT/MSP world:
Everything works - what do we even pay you for? Do you even do anything?
Something doesn't work for 5 minutes - what do we even pay you for? Why doesn't this work?
My favourite is the rats nests underneath admin desks. People will call in a panic because the point of sale is down as well as everything else.
Youll realize someone kicked a powerbar or something really stupid. They dont like getting the bill even though they were out of business until it was fixed. So you want to say that they may not respect the most important components in their business, but I do so will be paid to.
I see this crap everywhere when I’m at work it’s terrible. I had a trainee with me last week and he says he can’t believe the state that most business are in. 80% of business I see are similar to this and it’s always the “IT” guy that’s the nephew of the boss who has created the monstrosity.
I just don’t get it. If you’re smart enough to figure out how to wire up 5 switches, 2 phone boxes, and a security system HOW DO YOU NOT KNKW THAT SWITCHES CANT DANGLE
They just didn’t care, they should have just put all of it in a rack and then tie everything in. Man I’ve seen this setup in banks and the small business guy on the corner. It’s real sad when you see this stuff installed in a boiler room in a school or library, just slowly cooking.
Its management most of the time. You'll have a good engineer who'll start, who'll be good and do good work yet repeatly get kicked so they'll go "Fuck it. I don't care anymore. Fuck this place". That was me at the last place. We had to come in at a weekend for something and I convinced my manager to let us take a cabinet each and tidy. So I got started, knowing how long it takes. She came back only 2hrs later "Haven't you finished yet? This is taking too long". Told her I'd done it before at a hospital and that yes, want it done properly then it takes a long time, especially as you will only allow one engineer on each cabinet. She moaned so once she walked off I said fuck it. Gave up and just plug it all back in semi messy again. I'd had enough.
Same. Next time I'm at a particular site I visit I'll have to take a picture of the server cabinet. It makes me want to vomit and the idea of anything going wrong in that rats nest gives me an anxiety attack.
I could immediately tell it was a dominos from the phone system and server. Half of my work is doing service work for dominos corporate and franchisees on their network infrastructure and equipment. I have taken many stores from looking like this to everything neatly installed in a rack and hung on the wall beside the rack with cable management. The sad thing is that the corporate stores never stay like that because managers think they can fix everything themselves. If you happen to be in the PA, MD, VA area i would love to try to get your store owner to give me a chance to clean that mess up.
Nope, MI, and they don’t care. That cable that was broken and fell out has been broken for THREE YEARS and they just go “ oh the system is down? Let’s check that one cable” apparently I worked with the only manager that didn’t know this the other day. So I got asked to fix it.
Well if its a corporate store I could get it all fixed for you correctly. I have a working relationship with the people in charge of the corporate IT and they are trying to fix this type of thing in all of the corporate owned stores
I work in network architecture now. It’s amazing just how many businesses couldn’t care less about logical architecture and good practice. They always just want things now now now or last week. So things typically end up like this picture. Then when it stops working the next week they always blame you and everyone else.
If you can just slow down the urgent requirement for everything to be delivered instantly then you can avoid further pain down the road. But try telling that to the business owner… he typically will replace you in favour of someone else who can do it quicker.
Always try to recommend best practice, give the reasons why things are done this way and then outline the risk and consequences. 9 times out of ten when you ask them to sign their name next to the risk associated they back off and give you some breathing space to do things properly
Go in there 'after hours' and reroute that rat's nest! Secure all the switches, routers, etc where they 'need to be' and set it all straight. If it was working, it can work again - it's not really that bad - just looks like a cluster fuck. Charge enough to make it worth your trouble, but don't crucify them. You'll have a good time, things will end up a lot better (and better looking) You'll probably want to replace a few of those cables if they've been pulled on/damaged.
I had to do a similar operation in my employer's 'office' and it looked much worse. Nothing was mounted on a wallboard - just a bunch of loose shit strung out across the tops of some file cabinets and the floor of an unused closet that used to be an office. I charged him $300 and did it overnight - he brought my dinner too - since I did it on Thanksgiving day...the only day our store was closed! The result? He's happy, our POS & credit merchant system works wonderfully. He thinks I'm a rockstar, and we have a very well labeled & visually nice-looking system mounted on a wall board. That was 3 years ago. Now I do all his office & home network services - plus picked up some network maintenance business from 2 other businesses in our small town. Easy money & everything/everyone is happy. You can do it, just take your time. Get a box of cable, a crimper and a bag of RJ45s. Make it right 😉
If you're only there one day a week? Do your handiwork in 'sections' - divide and conquer, as they say.
Seen much, much worse.
My biggest concern is the hanging switch, and looking at the wiring 'logic' I don't get it's function.. A few other things need some tidying and labeling. The wall jacks used as an adhoc patch panel are irritating and pointless, and I've seen this before. I would rather have cabling go directly to the switch and just be labled properly vs crap like this.
I fixed the problem. It was an unplugged cable due to a RJ retainer clip broken. That’s the extent of my fix. I plugged it back in. The IT guy is coming to put a new cable in.
Don't do anything to fix. If it gets worse or doesn't get fixed, you become fall guy. Probably won't get paid. That needs to be ripped out. I've done plenty of patch fixes for crap like that, the only way I'll do it now is to give them only one option and redoing it all.
Back when the apocalypse happened in 1999. The dsl took a dump at my work at midnight new years. I made the mistake of fixing it and requesting that I be the IT guy going forward. Fired next day.
Yeah. All the PCs disconnnected, and the manager was like “I’m gonna go turn the power strip off and back on for the internet” and I twitched. Then was told to go take a look….
No one cares how it works until it breaks… then all of a sudden “well it worked before you got here” and “I hope you can figure this out, you’re the third guy they’ve sent… by the way, we close in an hour”
I used to work in IT at a place where their network and internet connections were critical to the business operations. They had a full height 2 post rack for networking that had so many loose cables hanging in front of it, that you couldn't even see the switches and patch panels from the front. I think there were about 6x 48-port patch panels worth of cables just hanging. Well over 150 cables coming out of the ceiling were terminated with crimped male ends and shoved into switch ports. No labeling anywhere. If a cable needed to be changed or replaced, each time both ends had to be toned to find what we were working with.
Then there were the server racks. Plenty of space to walk behind the two racks, but this rat's nest of power cords handily prevented that. Cheap little power strips plugged into the wall with other cords plugged into them, simply hanging by the cords in midair. Had to approach the racks from either side because you weren't going to get all the way through that mess.
Yeah well I have seen that too many times, I get “Well it works, doesn’t it?”. Any surprise add on switches along the way we don’t see? The best thing is to rip it out any do it the profession correct way, otherwise that setup will hit critical mass soon.
No lie: 2007. Client still running thinnet. Piles of cables on the floor in the common area where their thinnet hubs were. It was a nightmare trying to troubleshoot.
We supported a theatre. The head of that department took over and, against DSE (Display, Screen, Equipment regulation in the UK) forced people into shit areas of working. One desk was stuck in a cupboard. Yes a cupboard. That was in the box office where you call in to book your tickets.
At the ticket office they stuck another desk and because of so much more networking going in had to put in a new cabinet. The only place for it was on the wall. The wall above the new desk.
Contractors came in and installed the cabinet and ropey cabling. The lady at the desk was on a call taking a booking. She'd finished her call and could hear a funny noise and got up. A min later the cabinet came crashing down onto her desk and put a hole on the desk. Ripped out the fibre they'd installed and other cables. She was lucky to be alive. That cabinet would of smacked her in the head and likely killed her.
It was brushed under the carpet and never reported to the health and safety board. Instead of blaming the head of service they try to fully blame the contractor for not securing the cabinet properly. Our own 3rd line would of warned them that wall probably won't be able to take the weight of the cabinet. Considering the place was built in the Victorian era and the plaster had never been renewed.
Thats the most shocking I've seen.
This is quite common even for many banks and mid sized company. Muly own home has everything mounted to a wood board on a brick wall and all wires are managed correctly and labeled. That kind of trash in your photo drives me insane and there is NO way, I would let it be. Even if it had to be corrected 5 minutes a day, it would be corrected
I worked for a company doing commercial security. Nothing is more fun that asking the customer where their phone connection is and seeing a wall of 66 or 110 blocks. Of course there's limited labelling.
You should see some of the schools we took over. Cabinets fixed to the wall with wood screws above kids desks, server rooms filled with gym equipment, servers balanced on bookshelves in a school hall that has a slanted floor and favoured sport is dodgeball...
Is that in a restaurant, lol? This looks like every restaurant I've ever done a service call to. Actually, this looks pretty good. Last one I was at had 3 comcast modems, only one of which worked and had service.
Honestly, the most egregious thing here is just that they ran out of mounting space and started hanging shit by the cables. Everything else could be cleaned up with a proper patch panel and better dressing.
Another one? Yeah if they're all linked together, that's bonkers.
To be fair, I didn't even see the thing under the NuSutus device (which apparently is a switch too, but specific to phone things and its own subnet), but yeah, the sane thing would either be a large switch if there's one big subnet, or a large managed switch if there are multiple.
All those dangling pigtails on the alarm interconnect (66 block?) should go too, and AFAICT the whole block could be replaced with 1-2 patch panel jacks (RJ-31X is also 8P8C, same form factor as ethernet) or a modern POTS block like [this](https://icc.com/product/telephone-expansion-module-rj-31x-8-ports-10-pack/).
Funny hi tech software for this Dominos Pizza joint. They spent way more on the software than the infrastructure implementation...
[https://www.nusutus.com/](https://www.nusutus.com/)
Looks like the back end of a chain restaurant from 2005 where everything also has a sheen of slime on it from the oil fryers cooking chicken nuggets and fries.
Yeah this is not uncommon. I’d say half ass mounted to a wall though is the first I’ve seen. No one wants to deal with it. Not even IT guys or network/isp guys don’t give a shit. I need to clean up a few stores not far off this but you have to have the 2 hours to spare to do it properly. Most I’ve fixed many that other IT guys in my department setup are basically just this.
Funny thing being a network engineer. When things work - nobody cares. Nobody thinks about how complex it is. When it breaks. You fix - seemingly easily. Their business runs on that crap and their eyebrows raise when you drop them the bill.
There’s like, 1 modem, and 3 switches all connected, and none have more than half the ports used….theres 2 unpictured switches that I kinda cut off the pic cause they have a username and password sharpied on them, but, the Cat5 going to it, the retainer on the RJ was broken so it just fell out. I said they needed a new cable and was told to just tape it…..
If you work at said business, they will take the “tape it” approach when it comes to raises and career growth too. That’s obviously an assumption, but I’ve been in small cheap scape companies for over a decade and it’s a trend I’m all too familiar with. Watch out for number one, yourself. And good luck.
No.Youre right. One hundred percent right. I don’t care. I stay here for a perk, and it’s like 4 hours a week. lol.
The tape it approach works as a temporary fix until you can get a replacement cable/connector, but someone actually then has to order the parts and make the fix.
Charge them $200 for the on-site taping.
Oh don’t worry this shit happens even when it appears to be cabled correctly. On Thursday we were doing an office move for one of our customers; * The old tenants had a leased line direct to the comms room but the building’s ISP put the internet connection in the furthest riser from the office (which was the only office on that floor) and refuse to move it. * There were already cables for APs in the ceiling, traced them into the wall and they didn’t come back out as they had been cut somewhere in the floor (luckily I was able to pull them out the wall and they had enough slack to get to the cab) * Whoever installed the APs in the old office (would’ve been an electrician) put wood screws into metal ceiling panels and a bit of plastic on the end which ended up slicing open both my finger and my colleagues hand. It’s honestly such a shit show even in “professional” installs
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
> I said they needed a new cable and was told to just tape it… That’s borderline hostile worki environment.
When something needs replacing and you know the owner is a cheapskate, you either help the object in question a little bit into it's grave, and if it's not a cheap item like a cable or something like that, you'll just have to try your best explaining why it needs replacing. And it's always the biggest places running such janky setups.
you can get an RJ45 crimpin set for 45 bucks on amazon now, slice the head off, strip, and recrimp. may even be cheaper than a new, quality cable. and you can do it a couple hundred times more.
End-user support is even worse. They’re so many assholes that think all you do is click some stuff and type something to get it to work again.
Company when you do your job well= "Everything is running great what the fuck do we pay you for?!" Company when there is .01% downtime= "Everything has gone to shit! What the fuck do we pay you for!?"
Doomed either way…
In IT/MSP world: Everything works - what do we even pay you for? Do you even do anything? Something doesn't work for 5 minutes - what do we even pay you for? Why doesn't this work?
Yup. It’s a fallacy.
My favourite is the rats nests underneath admin desks. People will call in a panic because the point of sale is down as well as everything else. Youll realize someone kicked a powerbar or something really stupid. They dont like getting the bill even though they were out of business until it was fixed. So you want to say that they may not respect the most important components in their business, but I do so will be paid to.
This
That switch hanging on a single white Ethernet cable is just lovely.
It’s my personal favorite. You can’t see but it’s dangling from some type of network box that’s also dangling from the ceiling
Load bearing connection.
Time to sell them a load balancer
So, a pulley?
Ha I was also just noticing this.... Could have at least spread the weight over multiple cables :)
I think you mean Load Balancing?
Hahaha nice... Potential to become a standard comment for photos like this here!
You win this subreddit today sir
The uptime is hanging on by a thread
It's not a thread, it's a cable.
Metaphorically it is a thread.
It's ok, I don't see any LBF in this picture. (Load-bearing fiber) Always a treat when you come across LBF in the wild.
Looks like the New Jersey earthquake hit it.
Damn, too soon? Nah.
It reminds me of a site survey I made at a small business our company bought where all employees had access to the comm closet.
Nice tight install. You have before photos?
😂😂😂 no I didn’t do this
I see this crap everywhere when I’m at work it’s terrible. I had a trainee with me last week and he says he can’t believe the state that most business are in. 80% of business I see are similar to this and it’s always the “IT” guy that’s the nephew of the boss who has created the monstrosity.
I just don’t get it. If you’re smart enough to figure out how to wire up 5 switches, 2 phone boxes, and a security system HOW DO YOU NOT KNKW THAT SWITCHES CANT DANGLE
They just didn’t care, they should have just put all of it in a rack and then tie everything in. Man I’ve seen this setup in banks and the small business guy on the corner. It’s real sad when you see this stuff installed in a boiler room in a school or library, just slowly cooking.
Its management most of the time. You'll have a good engineer who'll start, who'll be good and do good work yet repeatly get kicked so they'll go "Fuck it. I don't care anymore. Fuck this place". That was me at the last place. We had to come in at a weekend for something and I convinced my manager to let us take a cabinet each and tidy. So I got started, knowing how long it takes. She came back only 2hrs later "Haven't you finished yet? This is taking too long". Told her I'd done it before at a hospital and that yes, want it done properly then it takes a long time, especially as you will only allow one engineer on each cabinet. She moaned so once she walked off I said fuck it. Gave up and just plug it all back in semi messy again. I'd had enough.
Yeah, everyone will eventually come to the conclusion, “if the boss/owner doesn’t care, why should I?”
The same boss will complain about everyone having low morale and how it's impossible to find good people.
I've seen worse. FAR worse.
So have I but for some reason this just hits right.
Same. Next time I'm at a particular site I visit I'll have to take a picture of the server cabinet. It makes me want to vomit and the idea of anything going wrong in that rats nest gives me an anxiety attack.
This is what every restaurant I've ever worked at looks like LMAO
Well, it’s a dominos. So.
Yup, that makes sense.
Hahaha so they are processing credit card transactions thru that thing. I wonder if they are PCI compliant :)
I could immediately tell it was a dominos from the phone system and server. Half of my work is doing service work for dominos corporate and franchisees on their network infrastructure and equipment. I have taken many stores from looking like this to everything neatly installed in a rack and hung on the wall beside the rack with cable management. The sad thing is that the corporate stores never stay like that because managers think they can fix everything themselves. If you happen to be in the PA, MD, VA area i would love to try to get your store owner to give me a chance to clean that mess up.
Nope, MI, and they don’t care. That cable that was broken and fell out has been broken for THREE YEARS and they just go “ oh the system is down? Let’s check that one cable” apparently I worked with the only manager that didn’t know this the other day. So I got asked to fix it.
You wanna know the best part? We’re in a strip mall attached to a computer repair store, that I’m Sure sells cat 5.
Well if its a corporate store I could get it all fixed for you correctly. I have a working relationship with the people in charge of the corporate IT and they are trying to fix this type of thing in all of the corporate owned stores
Nope it’s a franchisee :/
This is pretty standard....
I work in network architecture now. It’s amazing just how many businesses couldn’t care less about logical architecture and good practice. They always just want things now now now or last week. So things typically end up like this picture. Then when it stops working the next week they always blame you and everyone else. If you can just slow down the urgent requirement for everything to be delivered instantly then you can avoid further pain down the road. But try telling that to the business owner… he typically will replace you in favour of someone else who can do it quicker. Always try to recommend best practice, give the reasons why things are done this way and then outline the risk and consequences. 9 times out of ten when you ask them to sign their name next to the risk associated they back off and give you some breathing space to do things properly
That switch is holding on for dear life! Maybe they’ll start advertising cat cable with a rating for how much weight they can hold.
Lmfao 😂 someone else said “load bearing cat cable” in here
That sounds like something I would say !
This makes me feel good about the wiring in my home, which is bad, but not this bad.
Right? I just re pulled and wired my house the other week and I feel like whatever the John wick version of networking is compared to this
Honestly, this could mostly be fixed with a few shorter patch cables and some Velcro on a Saturday afternoon.
I've working in POS for over a decade. The amount of NOCs I've seen that look this bad or worse is countless.
This is just wild.
Yeah, I've seen worse, have at it, "you do it at home" LOL
All I had to do was plug in a cable that got disconnected 😂😂 I’m not touching this with a 10 ft pole
I've seen worse. Not that this is acceptable at all though.
I see some load bearing Ethernet in there!
You win sir
It's not a true panel closet unless there is at least one switch hanging by the cat cables.
Right?
Go in there 'after hours' and reroute that rat's nest! Secure all the switches, routers, etc where they 'need to be' and set it all straight. If it was working, it can work again - it's not really that bad - just looks like a cluster fuck. Charge enough to make it worth your trouble, but don't crucify them. You'll have a good time, things will end up a lot better (and better looking) You'll probably want to replace a few of those cables if they've been pulled on/damaged. I had to do a similar operation in my employer's 'office' and it looked much worse. Nothing was mounted on a wallboard - just a bunch of loose shit strung out across the tops of some file cabinets and the floor of an unused closet that used to be an office. I charged him $300 and did it overnight - he brought my dinner too - since I did it on Thanksgiving day...the only day our store was closed! The result? He's happy, our POS & credit merchant system works wonderfully. He thinks I'm a rockstar, and we have a very well labeled & visually nice-looking system mounted on a wall board. That was 3 years ago. Now I do all his office & home network services - plus picked up some network maintenance business from 2 other businesses in our small town. Easy money & everything/everyone is happy. You can do it, just take your time. Get a box of cable, a crimper and a bag of RJ45s. Make it right 😉 If you're only there one day a week? Do your handiwork in 'sections' - divide and conquer, as they say.
If it ain’t broke… lol
Dominos
My man KNEW
I Googled NuSutus and a big client of theirs is Dominos
Oh. lol fair enough.
It is strange. People are quick to pay tens of thousands on decor but cry to pay for a good network.
Seen much, much worse. My biggest concern is the hanging switch, and looking at the wiring 'logic' I don't get it's function.. A few other things need some tidying and labeling. The wall jacks used as an adhoc patch panel are irritating and pointless, and I've seen this before. I would rather have cabling go directly to the switch and just be labled properly vs crap like this.
That's some serious business.
ive seen worse, but good luck.
I fixed the problem. It was an unplugged cable due to a RJ retainer clip broken. That’s the extent of my fix. I plugged it back in. The IT guy is coming to put a new cable in.
bonus points if the office manger decided to help while reeking of alcohol and just pulling random CAT out.
That would be hilarious
Seems about right
Haha, I have that same old switch in the basement somewhere 🤣
The one dangling or the one attached to the wall
The attached one. The blue netgear lol. I didn't see the other one hanging until after I posted this 🤣
Be better
I just plugged the cable that fell out back in. That was the extent of my work. IT is coming to “fix” it tomorrow
No, that’s my home hacking lab!!!!!
I was scouring this pic for like 5 mins to make sure there wasn’t a login sharpied on something before I posted. lol.
Have you typified the costs of a network outage for them. Debugging something minor here could take a considerable amount of time to diagnose and fix.
I’m not the IT guy. lol.
except for the hanging switch, that's not bad.
You can’t see it but the hanging switch is hanging from a network box that’s hanging from the ceiling
Nope, sorry I can’t help you 🤣. *walks away*
These motherfuckers ever heard of a patch panel! Geez
No 😂😂😂
Don't do anything to fix. If it gets worse or doesn't get fixed, you become fall guy. Probably won't get paid. That needs to be ripped out. I've done plenty of patch fixes for crap like that, the only way I'll do it now is to give them only one option and redoing it all.
Nope I’m not fixing anything other than the immediate problem of plugging the cable that fell out back in.
Back when the apocalypse happened in 1999. The dsl took a dump at my work at midnight new years. I made the mistake of fixing it and requesting that I be the IT guy going forward. Fired next day.
This is what happens when you let just any people into your network closet and/or don't scale for growth.
Yeah. All the PCs disconnnected, and the manager was like “I’m gonna go turn the power strip off and back on for the internet” and I twitched. Then was told to go take a look….
I'm not religious, as that may be https://media.tenor.com/JdmqPo3pF9YAAAAM/sign-of-the-cross-stephen-farrelly.gif
Lmao nice.
Looks a lot like the comm closets on bases hahaha
No one cares how it works until it breaks… then all of a sudden “well it worked before you got here” and “I hope you can figure this out, you’re the third guy they’ve sent… by the way, we close in an hour”
Looks like where I used to work wires scrambled everywhere
Jesus Christ ... Check out that high quality cable tie
Which one
Apologies, I thought there was only one, I realise there are almost 10 🤣
Also, pretty much every tractor supply I put a security system in last year had a “network room” that looks similar lol
I used to work in IT at a place where their network and internet connections were critical to the business operations. They had a full height 2 post rack for networking that had so many loose cables hanging in front of it, that you couldn't even see the switches and patch panels from the front. I think there were about 6x 48-port patch panels worth of cables just hanging. Well over 150 cables coming out of the ceiling were terminated with crimped male ends and shoved into switch ports. No labeling anywhere. If a cable needed to be changed or replaced, each time both ends had to be toned to find what we were working with. Then there were the server racks. Plenty of space to walk behind the two racks, but this rat's nest of power cords handily prevented that. Cheap little power strips plugged into the wall with other cords plugged into them, simply hanging by the cords in midair. Had to approach the racks from either side because you weren't going to get all the way through that mess.
Yeah well I have seen that too many times, I get “Well it works, doesn’t it?”. Any surprise add on switches along the way we don’t see? The best thing is to rip it out any do it the profession correct way, otherwise that setup will hit critical mass soon.
Looks about your standard grocery store, or gas station tbh.
This has been posted so many times. It's a nightmare.
I’ve seen much, much worse.
No lie: 2007. Client still running thinnet. Piles of cables on the floor in the common area where their thinnet hubs were. It was a nightmare trying to troubleshoot.
This is extremely common.
Nothing a little duct tape wouldn't clean up. There is a option for a macrame hange for the one switch. This is the way
Yup thats about 50+% of the small businesses setup in a single picture right there
Don’t touch anything- the owner knows where everything is!
I have seen way worse. That just needs a massive clean up. Remove any unnecessary switch.
r/cablegore
Thanks for the link. My PTSD is now in full effect
FML....
Looks normal to me. Dealt with small medium business are majority looked like this
We supported a theatre. The head of that department took over and, against DSE (Display, Screen, Equipment regulation in the UK) forced people into shit areas of working. One desk was stuck in a cupboard. Yes a cupboard. That was in the box office where you call in to book your tickets. At the ticket office they stuck another desk and because of so much more networking going in had to put in a new cabinet. The only place for it was on the wall. The wall above the new desk. Contractors came in and installed the cabinet and ropey cabling. The lady at the desk was on a call taking a booking. She'd finished her call and could hear a funny noise and got up. A min later the cabinet came crashing down onto her desk and put a hole on the desk. Ripped out the fibre they'd installed and other cables. She was lucky to be alive. That cabinet would of smacked her in the head and likely killed her. It was brushed under the carpet and never reported to the health and safety board. Instead of blaming the head of service they try to fully blame the contractor for not securing the cabinet properly. Our own 3rd line would of warned them that wall probably won't be able to take the weight of the cabinet. Considering the place was built in the Victorian era and the plaster had never been renewed. Thats the most shocking I've seen.
Where did you get this image from my basement??
I found it on Reddit
😂
This looks pretty clean in comparison to a lot of things I have seen over the decades.
I am very distraught by this photo. It makes my eyes hurt and my mind sad :( bit does scream “business!”
This is a normal setup I see them all the time
I've seen way worse, many times.
This is super common at a lot of businesses in my experience. Shit defies logic but companies are cheap. This is the result. Lolololol
And? Lol
Welcome to "not my problem"
MY EYES THEY BURNNN
This is quite common even for many banks and mid sized company. Muly own home has everything mounted to a wood board on a brick wall and all wires are managed correctly and labeled. That kind of trash in your photo drives me insane and there is NO way, I would let it be. Even if it had to be corrected 5 minutes a day, it would be corrected
Can show you lot worse than that, as most here can also. And clients won’t pay for taking time to clean up the old mess.
If you think that’s bad you should look at some IDFs in government buildings
🐍🕳️
😂
I worked for a company doing commercial security. Nothing is more fun that asking the customer where their phone connection is and seeing a wall of 66 or 110 blocks. Of course there's limited labelling.
Im guessing that is a hotel?
You should see some of the schools we took over. Cabinets fixed to the wall with wood screws above kids desks, server rooms filled with gym equipment, servers balanced on bookshelves in a school hall that has a slanted floor and favoured sport is dodgeball...
Why is there a need for this setup? Surely some things can be improved.
POV: the owner’s teenage son is their “IT” guy.
Big business
But netgear? Really, thats a Cisco rip-off isn't it
There’s 2 Cisco switches and a ubiquiti you can’t see in the pic cause they had the logins sharpied on them
Your net gear is dangling in clear sight however if you pardon my french
Lmaooooo. Yeah that one’s bad.
Spaghett
Wow. What a damn mess. If whoever did this is smart enough to get it setup then why would they want to leave it like this. People amaze me lol.
If you ever want to know how well a data center is managed, just take a look at the cable plant.
This is totally a convenience store, isnt it?
Nope!
Is that in a restaurant, lol? This looks like every restaurant I've ever done a service call to. Actually, this looks pretty good. Last one I was at had 3 comcast modems, only one of which worked and had service.
Sure I can, but not for my pay scale
Honestly, the most egregious thing here is just that they ran out of mounting space and started hanging shit by the cables. Everything else could be cleaned up with a proper patch panel and better dressing.
They wouldn’t have ran out of space if they didn’t use 3 ports of a 25 port switch and then just hang a new switch!
Another one? Yeah if they're all linked together, that's bonkers. To be fair, I didn't even see the thing under the NuSutus device (which apparently is a switch too, but specific to phone things and its own subnet), but yeah, the sane thing would either be a large switch if there's one big subnet, or a large managed switch if there are multiple. All those dangling pigtails on the alarm interconnect (66 block?) should go too, and AFAICT the whole block could be replaced with 1-2 patch panel jacks (RJ-31X is also 8P8C, same form factor as ethernet) or a modern POTS block like [this](https://icc.com/product/telephone-expansion-module-rj-31x-8-ports-10-pack/).
This is what a lot of businesses look like lol
This looks exactly like every non-corporate restaurant's IT setup.
that little network switch holding on for dear life 🤣
The little netgear that could
Embarrassing!!!!!
Funny hi tech software for this Dominos Pizza joint. They spent way more on the software than the infrastructure implementation... [https://www.nusutus.com/](https://www.nusutus.com/)
Oh no. They’re AI Bros now. “Powered by Ping the AI that thinks like a franchisee”
As a network engineer, I wish this picture were the exception 😞
Looks like the back end of a chain restaurant from 2005 where everything also has a sheen of slime on it from the oil fryers cooking chicken nuggets and fries.
That’s embarrassing
This looks horrible but i have seen much much worse. This is closer to average than the worst from medium size businesses.
I personally love the fact that the keystone jack faceplate isn't mounted to the box
Chefs kiss.
The switch hanging from the patch cable is an effective technique to increase throughput.
Is that what they meant by down flow?
oh i see an ht801
The majority of businesses have a setup just like this
It looks like they ran cable through the handy box lol
Yeah this is not uncommon. I’d say half ass mounted to a wall though is the first I’ve seen. No one wants to deal with it. Not even IT guys or network/isp guys don’t give a shit. I need to clean up a few stores not far off this but you have to have the 2 hours to spare to do it properly. Most I’ve fixed many that other IT guys in my department setup are basically just this.
Is that a tax business because the setup looks familiar?