Tag: network

Structured Cabling

This article provides a brief overview of structured cabling.

According to Wikipedia’s article on “Structured Cabling” there are six subsystems into which structured cabling falls:

  • Entrance Facilities – The termination point of the communications company’s network and the beginning point of one’s on-premises cabling.
  • Equipment Rooms – Consolidates cabling generally within the same floor.
  • Backbone Cabling – Usually runs between the various equipment rooms, which are often on different floors.
  • Horizontal Cabling – Cabling that runs from an equipment room to an individual outlet.
  • Telecommunications Rooms / Telecommunications Enclosures – Connects backbone cabling to horizontal cabling.[1]
  • Work Area Components – From the individual outlets (horizontal cabling) to the user’s equipment.

The standards for structured cabling are provided by various organizations (CENELEC, IEC, ISO, TIA), see above Wikipedia article for a listing of ANSI/TIA standards.

  1. [1]I am unsure what the difference is here between equipment rooms and telecommunications rooms, seems as if they would be one and the same?↩

The Network

Introduction to the Network

This document outlines a number of resources for learning about networking technology. For example, there are resources on 10 GbE, switches, subnet masks and IP addressing, VLANs, OSI, firewalls, and so on.

 

Firewalls

Routers

IP Addresses

Virtual LANs

MPLS

Routers

DNS

  1. What You Need to Know About the DNS System, TechTarget.
  2. How DNS Works, dnsimple.
  3. Reverse DNS (rDNS), WhatIs.

SDN

  1. Your Next Switch: The Data Center’s Software-Defined Future, TechTarget, 2014.
  2. Jon Toigo. How to Define SDN, TechTarget.

WAN

Switches

  1. How To Buy: What IT Needs to Look for in Data Center Switches, TechTarget.
  2. How to Plan a Campus Core Switch Refresh: Basic Requirements.

Protocols

 

Ubiquiti UniFi Controller Management Software

Ubiquiti offers enterprise products at drastically reduced costs (e.g. compare the cost of their offerings to those from Meraki or Meru).

What is the Ubiquiti Controller?

Before you start installing any components you need to know about the Ubiquiti Controller. This is the management software for organizing one’s network.

The Ubiquiti controller is available for free download for Windows, Mac, or Linux; or one can use a Cloud Key. It requires the Java Runtime Environment and a web browser.

One can run the software on a management station (computer/server) at the location of the network or in the cloud.

Moving Between Controllers

  1. Log into the current controller.
  2. Go to Settings –> Site.
  3. Under Device Authentication, ensure you have set and know the current SSH username/password used to access devices.
  4. Go to Settings –> Maintenance.
  5. Download backup.
  6. Close controller window in browser.
  7. Right click on Ubiquiti Unifi Controller app and choose Quit.
  8. Login to new controller.
  9. Go to Settings –> Maintenance.
  10. Choose Restore and select recently created backup file.
  11. “Working Please Wait” appears on the screen indicating the unit is applying the update and rebooting. For me, this never seemed to go away, but I was able to launch a new instance of the controller web GUI without incident.