Hey everybody! I haven't been as active lately in the forums as I'd like to be; let me explain why. First of all, I've been pretty sick for about a month and a half now, since I've been working in foul weather without taking any sick time. Which brings me to the other major reason... I'm basically building the entire infrastructure of my companies' new facilities from the ground up by myself. This includes the network (including building the servers from scratch), phone systems, CCTV system, and even the P.A. I have temporarily hired on a telecom guy to help out with the phone stuff (which I don't know almost anything about), but the majority of the burden is on my shoulders. Anyway, I'll be a more regular poster starting probably around the late February mark. Until then, I'll be around as much as time allows! This is a great forum with great regulars, and I'm glad to be a part. All the best, -AT
Is Absenteeism really a word? Sounds terrible, but I'd rather be doing it than school... Get well soon :good:
You have a cool job. I'm currently reading a networking book and theres chapters and chapters on designing and implementing a network. Cool....
n/p Anti get well soon dude! currently the weather in the UK is pretty bad is well. oh and you do have a good job.
Thanks for all the support and well-wishing, everybody! If I get the chance, I'll start taking pictures of my progress, so you can see what I'm talking about. We even had to run all our own conduit in the walls for the low voltage (data and phone) drops, pull all the cable, plan the whole thing out, purchase the materials, I mean everything. With that in mind, it's scary to think about the fact that if anything doesn't work, it's my fault. It was really a relief to get all the data connections terminated to the patch panel yesterday, and see each and every drop test out at CAT6! Hoorah! -AT
Was wondering where you'd been... glad you're still among the living! Looking forward to your return :good:
Here's some pictures of some of the stuff I've been working on. There's a shot of one of the external junction boxes (it's located on the roof of the offices), and the network rack/server stand. Notice I had to run cable tracks elevated over an exposed electrical conduit. I'd like to thank the electrician for his half-assed work. Thank you sir. Without you, my job would be too easy! Also a couple of shots of the new dual-Barton 2800+ server I just finished. That redundant PSU barely fits in there!
Yeah, it was really hard work. It's getting interesting now that everything is actually coming together. I'll take pictures of the NOC once this project is finished; it should look a little more impressive with all the switches and servers in it.
Update: Hoorah! We've now got the MICS talking to the phones! That's a really good feeling, because prior to this project I had exactly zero experience with phone systems.
Well there's a lot more to it than that, but it's not as difficult as I thought. We now have all the phones talking to the KSU and to eachother, and all of the extensions are assigned. The KSU is also able to page over our Bogen P.A. system! I'm sure this is nothing at all to career Telecom guys, but to this IT Admin it was a huge victory. I also replaced our old server with that new dual-K7 Linux box. To be honest though I wasn't so concerned with that, as I'm pretty comfortable with that aspect of the infrastructure. -AT
Thanks Fred & Fetus Progress marches along, as we finished setting up our voicemail module (called a NAM) just today. That was a welcome relief, as I'm really sketchy with the phone stuff. Lots of new pics for you today. There's a shot of the split-off of the data cable from the phone cable. Be gentle, I'm a network guy, not a network-cable guy! Also a shot of one of our (programmed) phones with the new desks that are going in, and a (boring) shot of a terminated faceplate for one of the drops. If you look at the picture of the network rack you'll notice that it's not even halfway done. We're still waiting on some cable management, so I wasn't too inclined to deploy all of the patch cables just to redo them later. Finally, there's also one of the phone backboard, with our Nortel MICS, NAM and all the other garbage. Please ignore the straggling jumper cables everywhere, as they'll only be there until our setup phase is complete. All the best, -AT
Heck, I think everything looks great... but that might have something to do with the fact that I'm a nothing guy.
