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DOWNLOAD: Network cabling tips and tricks

Category 5/5e cable is the most common cabling system for networks today. Our Anatomy of CAT5 cable quick-reference chart provides essential information for those who work with CAT5 and CAT5e cable.

Check out the download:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5138-10586-5655591.html

Running network cable in old or large buildings can be a real challenge. Do you have a handy tip for quickly running cable?

Also, let us know if our Anatomy of CAT5 cable reference provided helpful information and if there's anything we can do to improve the document's format.

I can't think of any way of running it 'quickly' I would rather concentrate on running it so that the cables can be accessed if there are problems with cabling or if you need to expand the cabling. How many points are you installing, and are there any cables running between floors?

I personally would go for the cable ducting skirting board, top stuff, but it depends on how many points there are, and how new this installation is.

Just kidding. I have 75 years of old phone and network cables running throughout the warehouse I work at. I have thought about taking it all down, but in the mess the alarm system is tied into the old (15-20 years) circuit boards located all over. I contacted our local phone provider to come out and give me an estimate to do the work and was quoted $1400 and told it would take 2 days. I told my GM and he flipped on me. I would do it myself but it's just about impossible because of the ammount of work involved. (I am the WHOLE IT dept) All I can do is worry about the lan drops in the offices that I can see and the connections to my switches. Label BOTH ends and get a good probe and toner.

if you are lucky enough to have either guideways or emt the wire pushes through. tape twine and cable to wire. pull it back.
leave twine in for easy adding cables later.
( labeled clearly naturally )

if no emt / guideways, use the wire to feed across drop ceiling, tape cables and twine to it pull back.

it's the method Ive used in older building to connect mainframe terminals across 10 floors of offices. to wire duty free stores in international departures wing of YVR. ( yes Oz, I wired the longhouse Alders store for electrical, phone and data ) a 2 mile run of line.

Here's a technique I've used for running cable over drop ceilings:

I go to the midway point or all the way to the destination/drop point and push my trusty STANLEY tape measure blade back to the source point and then lock the blade.

I then go back to the source point and tape the cable to the end of the tape measure blade.

Back at the destination point, I unlock the blade and allow it to slowly retract and pull the cable to me.

Works great!

We use some 1/2 inch plastic PVC pipe, with connectors. They come in 6 or 8 foot lengths, put together several to span a longer area, using duct tape to hold them together when in use for easy teardown and storage. Flexible enough to go around a 90 degree bend in a 12 inch cable tray, but stiff enough to guide through most obstacles. You can easily cover 20 feet or more with 3 lengths of pipe. Rather inexpensive, as well.

If you have a conduit (pipe) with no string in it, you can get a string into it using an ordinary vacumm cleaner. Fashion a 'birdie' from a scrap piece of rag, not too big, just big enough that you fold it over and tie a string aroung the fold so that it fits into the pipe but not real tight, then attach your string to the birdie and apply a vacumm to the other end of the pipe, allowing the vacumm to pull the birdie through the pipe. Of course, if theres a pull box in there you will lose the vacumm so you have to do this at each pull box, but, when done right it is a lot easier and will save you some time over the old 'fish tape' routine.

I use a bike flag to pull across ceilings and to feed wire through holes in walls. The're flexible as the're made of fiberglass but also staiten up goood for strait runs. You can also tape them together for long runs.

I was talking to a colleague of mine and was telling him about some of the network cabling tricks that are in this thread.

As I was talking, he got this **** eating grin on his face, reached into his toolbox, and pulled out a CableCaster.

It's basically a high-powered dartgun with a fishing reel attached to it. It even has a mount for a Maglite flashlite. Coolest tool I've ever seen!

http://cableorganizer.com/greenlee/cablecaster/

Great tool, if you are running cable in a large open area over a drop ceiling. However, if there are obstructions, it becomes a major pain in the rear. I personally use the "Fish Sticks" Fibreglass poles (in four or six foot lengths)that screw together up to a max length of 20 or more feet....flexible enough to go around bends, through walls, whatever, but stiff enough to get the job done.

They have the Super balls that are about 2 to 3 inches. Drill a hole through it and tie a cord through the hole.

Open the ceiling at each end and throw the ball to someone at the other end and use that as a pull line. Keeps you from having to take out every other tile in the ceiling.

I knew a guy who tied cable to the back of a radioshack RC car and drove it across a drop ceiling. He said the only time you had to pull a tile other than at the ends was when you got stuck on ducting.

jgiacobbe

Given that the area above the drop ceiling is really the cold-air return plenum for many office building HVAC systems, there's some pretty nasty stuff up there.

I've done enough time crawling through ceilings running CAT5 to know that's not a job I'd want to do again.

Best to outsource it to a local telecom company or the building maintenance dept (especially if they're in a union and "own" the job).