Caring for your cables
Ray Geroski
Published: 23 Apr 2002 10:30 BST
The money issue
One of the obvious considerations is the allotted budget for IT infrastructure. If every company had an unlimited amount of money to spend on hardware, the easy way to maintain the network would be to regularly replace parts and cabling regardless of their condition. Unfortunately, no company has that luxury, so the condition of network hardware must be balanced against how much a company can spend to fix it. As several members noted, sometimes you just have to replace parts as they begin to malfunction or as performance issues begin to occur. At the very least, you can anticipate and plan for budget needs by conducting regularly scheduled inspections.
Replace when you perform other upgrades
Because infinite variables come into play when examining a network infrastructure -- such as budget constraints, environmental variances, and hardware quality differences -- it's hard to generalise about the timing for replacements. However, roger_simpson2002 offered a couple of good rules of thumb. First, he suggested that if you're upgrading your switching backbone, you should go ahead and replace the cabling too. Taking this extra step ensures that all of the equipment is updated. And, from a financial perspective, the cabling can be considered an integral, even necessary, part of the upgrade and can therefore be absorbed when budgeting that item.
Another instance in which you should replace the cabling is when you see signs of physical wear, he said. Other readers echoed this advice. Again, some kind of inspection of the cabling is important, regardless of whether you do it yourself or pay a technician to do it.
Your budget, your call
Although your budget may determine how much you can do to upgrade your network infrastructure and how often you replace cabling and other parts, it will be useful to keep these maintenance tips in mind:
- Pay attention to data errors as possible signs of cabling issues.
- Regularly inspect the cabling and other parts for signs of wear.
Replace cabling simultaneously with other upgrades.
Some networks may run for a decade or more on the same cabling with no problem; others may have to be updated after a few years. As our members have pointed out, because of the vast differences that can exist from one company network to the next, you often have to make your own call about it. But you should be able to use some of these insights to help you make the decision.
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