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freeedr
Feb 21, 2005

devmd01 posted:

Here's a friendly reminder to prevent some tickets coming in if you still have Windows 7 machines and O365, don't forget O365 is going TLS 1.2 only on October 31st.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3140245/update-to-enable-tls-1-1-and-tls-1-2-as-a-default-secure-protocols-in

Hope you have KB3140245 installed along with a GPO to push the registry key out!

Thanks for the warning that all my poo poo’s going to break

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Entropic
Feb 21, 2007

patriarchy sucks
This is always a bad sign when you're trying to trace a wire pair:

Wibla
Feb 16, 2011

Eep

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Entropic posted:

This is always a bad sign when you're trying to trace a wire pair:


Are you familiar with the velcro technique?

Entropic
Feb 21, 2007

patriarchy sucks

Arquinsiel posted:

Are you familiar with the velcro technique?

Do tell.

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady
It's depressingly simple.

Take a piece of Velcro that's too short to be useful for bundling cables, ideally one that is a different colour from the normal one used where you work. Stash it in your pocket. When you need to trace a wire, wrap it around that wire, and push/pull it along the length. If you meet an obstruction you just figure out where it is on the other side and re-attach it there. For poo poo like tracing fibre up through cab roofs and along trays of hundreds of identical yellow cables it's a lifesaver.

Entropic
Feb 21, 2007

patriarchy sucks
That doesn't seem that useful for situations where the run turns out to be hundreds of feet.

BTW this is what "the hole" turned out to be:

Weedle
May 31, 2006




Entropic posted:

That doesn't seem that useful for situations where the run turns out to be hundreds of feet.

BTW this is what "the hole" turned out to be:


You can't fool me, this is a screenshot from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

Entropic posted:

That doesn't seem that useful for situations where the run turns out to be hundreds of feet.

BTW this is what "the hole" turned out to be:


So should we get the mods to close Entropic's account now, or wait for confirmation of their gruesome death in a news piece about another technician not heeding the warnings of entering The Hole?

18 Character Limit
Apr 6, 2007

Screw you, Abed;
I can fix this!
Nap Ghost

Neddy Seagoon posted:

So should we get the mods to close Entropic's account now, or wait for confirmation of their gruesome death in a news piece about another technician not heeding the warnings of entering The Hole?

Unfair, at least one made it out for the 1-3 ratio for The Hole.

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

18 Character Limit posted:

Unfair, at least one made it out for the 1-3 ratio for The Hole.

You stupid fool, that's the one who made the blood-pact to offer other souls to The Hole in exchange for the dark magicks it provides :colbert:.

Entropic
Feb 21, 2007

patriarchy sucks
Don't worry, we had a Junior Tehcnician we could send into The Hole. He even survived the Spiders!

18 Character Limit
Apr 6, 2007

Screw you, Abed;
I can fix this!
Nap Ghost

Neddy Seagoon posted:

You stupid fool, that's the one who made the blood-pact to offer other souls to The Hole in exchange for the dark magicks it provides :colbert:.

The Company rewards high performing assets like that.

Renegret
May 26, 2007

THANK YOU FOR CALLING HELP DOG, INC.

YOUR POSITION IN THE QUEUE IS *pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt*


Cat Army Sworn Enemy

Entropic posted:

He even survived the Spiders!

He's probably the spider god by now

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

Entropic posted:

Don't worry, we had a Junior Tehcnician we could send into The Hole. He even survived the Spiders!

So what killed him? The crawling shadows? The Eerie Sound? Or just the Thing That Lurks Behind?

(Don't look over your shoulder if you think it's there now, you'll only get its attention...)

suuma
Apr 2, 2009

Entropic posted:

This is always a bad sign when you're trying to trace a wire pair:



I'm a support nerd, can somebody explain what this is?

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



suuma posted:

I'm a support nerd, can somebody explain what this is?

110 punch down block it looks like. It’s for cable termination. Think the backside of of patch panel.

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Entropic posted:

That doesn't seem that useful for situations where the run turns out to be hundreds of feet.

BTW this is what "the hole" turned out to be:

Happily you don't know that until you're already deep into sunk cost fallacy territory most times! One tech in work likes to use the longest cables possible for patches for just two or three U positions, so you'll often be climbing up into the overhead trays and down under the floors over and over and over again...

This is how I learned that the floor to floor riser panels are literally just cabled together through a hole someone punched into the concrete floor, and that you can actually fall through if you trust the underfloor cable trays to be correctly bolted together.

hihifellow
Jun 17, 2005

seriously where the fuck did this genre come from

Entropic posted:

That doesn't seem that useful for situations where the run turns out to be hundreds of feet.

BTW this is what "the hole" turned out to be:


I saw that in a movie. It was called As Above, So Below and half the group going in died.

MF_James
May 8, 2008
I CANNOT HANDLE BEING CALLED OUT ON MY DUMBASS OPINIONS ABOUT ANTI-VIRUS AND SECURITY. I REALLY LIKE TO THINK THAT I KNOW THINGS HERE

INSTEAD I AM GOING TO WHINE ABOUT IT IN OTHER THREADS SO MY OPINION CAN FEEL VALIDATED IN AN ECHO CHAMBER I LIKE

hihifellow posted:

I saw that in a movie. It was called As Above, So Below and half the group going in died.

oh hey I just watched that movie again a day or two ago, it's not bad; less cables and more monsters than this weird hallway of death.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Has someone made a poor-man's ladder tray by zip tying some short lengths of pipe to another pipe?

Also my opinion on punch blocks is Krone supremacy.

Entropic
Feb 21, 2007

patriarchy sucks

suuma posted:

I'm a support nerd, can somebody explain what this is?

It's BIX block. Similar to 110 block, but it's more common in Canada because it was Nortel's standard forever. It's basically a patch panel for wire pairs. If you have digital phones in your building then chances are there's a bunch of blocks of this type of stuff in a closet somewhere. It's mostly used for digital and analog telephony but you will occasionally see ethernet patch panels using it too.

I do a lot of work installing and servicing business phone systems. It's moving towards IP phones, which are way easier to work with because all you care about is that it has power and an ethernet connection. With digital phone systems, every wall jack gets connected to a specific port on the phone system which is programmed for a certain extension. So if you're installing a new phone system using existing cabling, you have to know where on the punchdown block the wire pair for each specific wall jack comes out. If you're very lucky, whoever cabled it in the first place decades ago actually labeled poo poo, and the labeling has been kept legible and up to date. You are never that lucky, which is why you need one of these: https://www.amazon.ca/Fluke-Networks-26000900-Pro3000-Generator/dp/B000FTADX0


Thanks Ants posted:

Has someone made a poor-man's ladder tray by zip tying some short lengths of pipe to another pipe?

Also my opinion on punch blocks is Krone supremacy.

I think the "ladder" was just meant to keep loose piping / cabling off the bare dirt floor.

I've never worked with Krone, but gently caress 66-block forever.

guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob
Is it Bix or Krone where the standard punch tool actually has a slicing cutter? I don't do traditional telephony, only data, but that tool was super neat.

Jaded Burnout
Jul 10, 2004


guppy posted:

Is it Bix or Krone where the standard punch tool actually has a slicing cutter? I don't do traditional telephony, only data, but that tool was super neat.

I can't speak for Bix but my Krone tool has an automatic cutter.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


I somehow have a genuine ADC-made tool and it's so much nicer than the cheap versions. You can decide whether you want it to cut or not, and it has an interlock so it won't cut the wire unless it punched it down properly. The whole Krone range is so ridiculously German.

angry armadillo
Jul 26, 2010

Entropic posted:

It's BIX block. Similar to 110 block, but it's more common in Canada because it was Nortel's standard forever. It's basically a patch panel for wire pairs. If you have digital phones in your building then chances are there's a bunch of blocks of this type of stuff in a closet somewhere. It's mostly used for digital and analog telephony but you will occasionally see ethernet patch panels using it too.

I do a lot of work installing and servicing business phone systems. It's moving towards IP phones, which are way easier to work with because all you care about is that it has power and an ethernet connection. With digital phone systems, every wall jack gets connected to a specific port on the phone system which is programmed for a certain extension. So if you're installing a new phone system using existing cabling, you have to know where on the punchdown block the wire pair for each specific wall jack comes out. If you're very lucky, whoever cabled it in the first place decades ago actually labeled poo poo, and the labeling has been kept legible and up to date. You are never that lucky, which is why you need one of these: https://www.amazon.ca/Fluke-Networks-26000900-Pro3000-Generator/dp/B000FTADX0


I think the "ladder" was just meant to keep loose piping / cabling off the bare dirt floor.

I've never worked with Krone, but gently caress 66-block forever.

I'm going to ask a dumb question because I've never been taught or met anyone who actually knows:

is there a trick to using those network flukes effectively? I can never get a positive result.

I have a site which used to be 2 sites, they built a road between them and joined them up (essentially)

On one side, I have krone strips which go to patch panels in data cabs, so patching is really easy.
The other site has exactly what you describe where every wall jack is an assigned socket and nothing is labelled. In the 4 years I've been here I've sussed all the important ones, but it would be nice to get the fluke working right

Jaded Burnout
Jul 10, 2004


angry armadillo posted:

I'm going to ask a dumb question because I've never been taught or met anyone who actually knows:

is there a trick to using those network flukes effectively? I can never get a positive result.

I have a site which used to be 2 sites, they built a road between them and joined them up (essentially)

On one side, I have krone strips which go to patch panels in data cabs, so patching is really easy.
The other site has exactly what you describe where every wall jack is an assigned socket and nothing is labelled. In the 4 years I've been here I've sussed all the important ones, but it would be nice to get the fluke working right

Dunno, I have a signal generator and detector like that, though for the life of me I can't find an email telling me the brand. It seems to Just Work provided I poked the end of the detector into the end of a cable since my ethernet is shielded all to hell.

spiny
May 20, 2004

round and round and round

Thanks Ants posted:

I somehow have a genuine ADC-made tool and it's so much nicer than the cheap versions. You can decide whether you want it to cut or not, and it has an interlock so it won't cut the wire unless it punched it down properly. The whole Krone range is so ridiculously German.

For my sins I do occasional punch down stuff, I have a collection of different 'krone' tools, some work better on some panels than others, so I mix and match:



Mostly I just do patch panel stuff now though, and even that, thankfully not very often.

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Jaded Burnout posted:

Dunno, I have a signal generator and detector like that, though for the life of me I can't find an email telling me the brand. It seems to Just Work provided I poked the end of the detector into the end of a cable since my ethernet is shielded all to hell.

Yeah, I've never had the whole "detect through drywall!" work. Usually I don't get a solid tone unless I practically have the probe right on top of the wire. However, I will say I don't have a Fluke toner. I remember having a Fluke cable tester waaaay back when I did network engineering and that was the poo poo.

Entropic
Feb 21, 2007

patriarchy sucks

angry armadillo posted:

I'm going to ask a dumb question because I've never been taught or met anyone who actually knows:

is there a trick to using those network flukes effectively? I can never get a positive result.

I have a site which used to be 2 sites, they built a road between them and joined them up (essentially)

On one side, I have krone strips which go to patch panels in data cabs, so patching is really easy.
The other site has exactly what you describe where every wall jack is an assigned socket and nothing is labelled. In the 4 years I've been here I've sussed all the important ones, but it would be nice to get the fluke working right

It helps to have an analog buttset with a BIX/110/whatever clip so that once you to know the general area you can tap in on each wire pair and see which once you hear the signal tone on.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.
gently caress punching down anything ever.

I recently moved into a new house and as part of a bunch of electrical work I was having cat5 pulled from various parts of the house back to a panel next to my cabinet in the garage.

When we were doing the walkthrough and talking about termination I showed him the leviton panel I’d already screwed into the wall.

He says, “And who will punch them down? You?”

I say, “No, I’ll leave that for you guys to do.”

A beat.

“...Okay.”

We had about ten thousand dollars of electrical work going into the house and I could tell that punching cat5 was this —-><—- close to being a deal breaker. No one wants to do it.

I pay people to do my plumbing. I pay people to do my landscaping. I pay people to do my punch-downs.

Jaded Burnout
Jul 10, 2004


Maybe I just haven't done enough of it, but I don't mind doing punch down stuff. The "toolless" keystone caps I have are annoying as poo poo, but normal punchdown biz is fine?

Inspector_666
Oct 7, 2003

benny with the good hair
I don't mind punching down at all, it's crimping that loving kills me.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.
Funny part is that after the job was done the electrician left his cable crimping tool and punch down tool behind.

I thought, “great! Now I have the tools to do it myself.”

I called him up and told him he left his tools behind.

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

angry armadillo posted:

I'm going to ask a dumb question because I've never been taught or met anyone who actually knows:

is there a trick to using those network flukes effectively? I can never get a positive result.

I have a site which used to be 2 sites, they built a road between them and joined them up (essentially)

On one side, I have krone strips which go to patch panels in data cabs, so patching is really easy.
The other site has exactly what you describe where every wall jack is an assigned socket and nothing is labelled. In the 4 years I've been here I've sussed all the important ones, but it would be nice to get the fluke working right
The one time I had to use it, RTFM solved the problem from the start.

The Fool
Oct 16, 2003


Inspector_666 posted:

I don't mind punching down at all, it's crimping that loving kills me.

This.

I'll put my headphones in and punch down patch panels all day.

I will not crimp another loving cable again in my life.

Inspector_666
Oct 7, 2003

benny with the good hair

The Fool posted:

This.

I'll put my headphones in and punch down patch panels all day.

I will not crimp another loving cable again in my life.

Yeah, punching is zen and using a real tool is a satisfying ker-THUNK experience (especially since panels are labeled so you don't have to memorize what goes where.

Crimping is finicky bullshit that hurts my fingers.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


I did about 120U worth of terminations in a weekend and I feel that's my lifetime quota completed. I terminate the odd faceplate here and there for friends or for me, that's it.

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Inspector_666 posted:

Yeah, punching is zen and using a real tool is a satisfying ker-THUNK experience (especially since panels are labeled so you don't have to memorize what goes where.

Crimping is finicky bullshit that hurts my fingers.

I still have one of these sitting in my network tool bag. The last time I used it was when I replaced all the cat5 with cat6 when I moved in 8 years ago.



Just slam 4 pair at once. With a reversible blade if you don't need/want to cut. It works fantastically.

It says it can do up to 5 pair, but I've only ever done ethernet cabling.

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PremiumSupport
Aug 17, 2015

Inspector_666 posted:

Yeah, punching is zen and using a real tool is a satisfying ker-THUNK experience (especially since panels are labeled so you don't have to memorize what goes where.

Crimping is finicky bullshit that hurts my fingers.

Agreed. With the proper tools punching is easy and painless. I'd rather spend my afternoon punching a couple hundred wires into blocks than trying to line up 8 little wires in the right order 30 times to crimp ends onto cable runs.

PremiumSupport fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Oct 24, 2018

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