this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Those are network switches, and this is 100% standard practice when decomissioning network equipment. Any time a data center is dismantled you see every single switch like this.

The reason is because every one of those runs was custom cut to length, so they will be useless in any other rack/ facility layout. Also, they all need to be pulled back through the length of the run. If you leave the RJ45 on the end they will not only not fit through a tight restriction, they will grab every single fucking slat on the cable race and cling on for dear life.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I doubt these are custom but I otherwise agree with you, though. I've decommed quite a few racks and the fastest way is to cut everything! Not worth the time to try to save everything because you're most likely not reusing those patch cables

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But those green cables have factory molded boots, not a slip on boot on a custom cut cable like the white ones in the photo?

So those green cables seem like they would be standard length patch cables and only the white is a custom cut.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

You know what you're right. I missed that. It's still standard practice to cut them for ease of cable pulling (and because fuck unplugging umpteen bajillion of those little fuckers). They may also have just been ordered as custom sizes for the particular install so they still cant be recycled, but the big reasons for doing it are just convenience.

[–] papalonian@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I mean I get it, but it still pains me to think about how many pounds of perfectly good cables get tossed for convenience. How much plastic are we producing and dumping for the sake of reducing billable hours ☹️ wish there was a better way.

[–] SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Have these people never heard of service loops?

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Service loops go at non-switch end of the run, otherwise you wind up with piles and piles of tabgled twisty bullshit in your network room (also it means you can move desktops around in the office floor, etc)

[–] perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

[–] Darkard@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If he was any sort of smart saboteur he would have wiped the startup config, scheduled a reload in 4 hours, started a disc format on the backups server, and then left.

[–] Senseless@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's why there should be multiple backups, at least one off-site. But it still would be a damn pain.

[–] HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

The kind of company that lets their IT do this isn't going to have off-site backups either

[–] IDew@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

These are just patch cables though, if he hasn't cut anything in the field or behind the rack, it's only a matter of replacing the patch cables

[–] JeffKerman1999@sopuli.xyz 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Good luck finding what goes where

[–] ramble81@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For 99% of them it doesn’t matter because it just goes to a port on the office (sorry, open space) floor. Some of those others on the right may matter if they’re going to different devices but there’s much less and you can just rerun a cable from a device probably a rack or two over.

Don’t get me wrong, this would suck, but it wouldn’t be more than a day of work.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There could be vlans on the ports which would be a pain to setup again for the entire office.

[–] ramble81@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes but you’re gonna have large chunks that are the same since people tend to sit in groups and ports tend to be grouped together. So you may have 3 groups rather than 1. And if you’re correctly using 802.1x it doesn’t matter as the vlans are dynamically assigned during authentication. If you’re not mature enough to be doing that you probably have a more flat layout with larger groups. Highly doubt it’d be dozens of vlans per area.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago

Nonono, you see this was not a network switch, it was a bit switch where the patch cables were setting the bits for the encryption key to all the company devices. Now all is lost never to be decrypted again.

[–] Kalkaline@leminal.space 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Amateur, he should have played "hide the magnet"

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Or "open the ceiling and coil copper wire around any cables in reach and make it look like they are just part of cable management".

[–] Hupf@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago

!cordcutters@infosec.pub

[–] Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I've been petty and done this, but only to one customer who was rude, abusive and demanding. My last few weeks there I made sure to fuck up her network down to the physical level, where I was fucking up wires all over the system to only affect her. After I left, I figured the only way they were going to fix her issues, is by starting from scratch with her. Still don't feel bad about it.