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Ask Slashdot: Recommendations For Beautiful Network Cable Trays?
First time accepted submitter murpht2 writes "My company prides itself on an office environment that follows a modern design aesthetic: open floor plan, bold colors on the walls, cool lamps in the corners. We're now engaged in a significant upgrade to our IT systems and we have a clash: the IT team leader wants to run network cable in trays hanging from the ceiling so all the client computers have high-speed access to the new servers; the guy in charge of the office design wants to keep things looking clean and the cable trays don't fit the bill. We're in a building made entirely of bricks and concrete, so we lack some of the between-the-wall spaces that are used in other settings. Any suggestions for beautiful cable trays or other alternatives?"
My company prides itself on an office environment that follows a modern design aesthetic: open floor plan, bold colors on the walls, cool lamps in the corners.
My lame company only prides itself on stupid shit like making good products and pleasing its customers.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I might not bother trying to find beautiful trays, but instead find regular ones, then decorate!
Take something like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003AU3HG6?ie=UTF8&camp=213733&creative=393185&creativeASIN=B003AU3HG6&linkCode=shr&tag=preinheimerco-20&qid=1386087250&sr=8-5&keywords=wire+tray
Then put these underneath: http://www.whatisblik.com/shop/explore?theme=77
Turn your office ceiling into a pacman arena!
paul reinheimer
Wifi is.. nice, but I wouldn't use it in a full office environment for everyday access. It's a big brick room, lots of computers, lots of interference. Not only is WiFi slower, but you end up with less throughput as interference requires random packets to be retransmitted.
paul reinheimer
Buy typical cable trays, and 3D print some sort of fancy colorful casings for them. You can use a variety of designs and colors for aesthetic appeal. Plus even if it doesn't look all that great it will still be "cutting edge" technology in use, which will likely appeal to your business folks. Plus you can throw a 3D printer in your budget...
Interesting idea, but given that it takes the average 3D printer hours to create something only a few inches across it's not terribly practical.
It would be more practical to hire a basket weaver... ooh... woven trays...
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Use brightly colored cables, get metal cable tray and rattle can spray paint it a contrasting color. I've seen it done very well, and it does add a near technical feel to a space.
Any interior designer could help you; if you're going for image, then that's probably not a bad idea anyway.
If you're not going for image.. drop tile. :)
..don't panic
You do have office pets, right? Just give them a collar with clips that hold SD cards, then train them to go to the server room and fill up the cards with data and return them to you.
Latency is a little high, but bandwidth can be pretty good - as they say, never underestimate the bandwidth of a Golden Retriever with a collar full of SD cards.
Some years ago when I moved my company into a new office and wanted to keep the cost down, I installed rain gutters (and occasional downspout) on the walls inside to run telephone and ethernet. It was inexpensive compared to official cable trays and hid the wiring nicely.
Gutters are standard architectural details and since they are very visible you can find nice looking designs and colors.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Simple: Ditch the servers and move to cloud. Then fire all your IT staff and replace them with contractors from India.
1. No need to work about the aesthetics of the server room.
2. Your office will now have additional space with the removal of all that ugly looking IT equipment.
3. Your managers will no longer have to listen to petty arguments by the IT workers.
4. You company will save money by hiring cheap IT workers from India.
Its a WIN-WIN situation for everyone!
You can get really nice industrial cable trays. Mount them high enough that they aren't immediately noticeable but they maintain that industrial and exposed look.
The good ones are powder coated so you can get a colour of your choice to match the office.
Use a tool called a cable comb when you are running the cables to put the cables into very straight and neat bundles.
Here is the manufacturer of a good quality system for cable trays:
http://wiremaidusa.com/
(they have many resellers. Your cabling contractor likely deals with a supplier who can get this)
Here is the cable comb tool for making straightened bundles of cables that look neat in they tray:
http://www.acomtools.com/
If you want something more enclosed then you can go to full conduit installation using metal pipes. The pipes can then be painted to match your ceiling colour.
"My company prides itself on an office environment that follows a modern design aesthetic: open floor plan, bold colors on the walls, cool lamps in the corners."
I'm happy for you that your office is pretty. But where do you go when you need to stop "collaborating" and get some actual work done? Or when the group at the bench across from yours is "collaborating" so loudly that your group can't hear each other talk?
Open floor plans may be great for some jobs, but they are poison for work that requires concentration, especially when that work also entails remote collaboration. If you find this isn't true, I'd like to hear more -- especially about how you handle conference-call participation when there's a loud discussion nearby.
(Yeah, I know I'll take an "off-topic" hit to my karma for this. Sorry; it's a hot button at the moment.)
NO NO NO NO NO. Wifi is not a direct replacement for wire, its just not. Wifi should be supplemental to the network, not the basis for the network. If you are choosing wifi for aesthetics in a business setting, you are in the wrong line of work.
Good-bye
If it's a small office, you can use Ethernet over power lines. I have not used it before, but it seems to be what you are looking for.
That being said, it's difficult to give up the 1000 Mb connections from modern ethernet cables, along with POE for phones, etc. The designer by not putting ethernet cables in place did your business a disservice. A secure business requires secure ethernet.
Ethernet over power lines? Yikes, that's about as bad as WiFi for security and it will be SLOW, SLOW, SLOW if you use a lot of devices in a small space...
The ONLY solution that is workable here is to plan to wire up everything that doesn't move. Everyplace you put a power plug, plan for a network drop next to it with one or more ports.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You might want to get some inspiration from reddit / imgur cableporn sections.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
The bigger problem is that having many nodes means having many collisions. The aggregate capacity of the WiFi channel goes down as the number of nodes increases. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSMA/CA
And after you set up Ethernet over power lines, you can set up Power over Ethernet equipment thereby eliminating all cables without needing to use WiFi!