Just thinking reading this that some of our buildings have different coloured cable going to the drop point depending on if its being feed from the north, south, east or west wiring closet on the floor.
Clever idea. Reminds me that years ago (pre structured wiring/cat anything) I had a job to do in Utica, NY. New construction, about 1000 locations, each one getting one voice, on connection to the IBM mainframe and one connection to the DEC minicomputer. All done with UTP. I was most concerned with the cable going to the right place, so I came up with a novel idea - multi colored cable! At the time cable only came in two colors, grey and beige. I made special arrangements with a cable company (Mohawk, I think) and as long as I bought a minimum of 100,000' I could get any color I wanted.
I had the local electricians (who were running the wire) run the grey cable to the voice closets, the blue to the IBM cluster controllers at one end of the data center and the beige to the DEC equipment at the far end of the data center. We had no problems with any wire winding up in the wrong place.
It seems funny to think about a problem getting a third color wire. This was in 1987 or '88 as I recall.
I also had special jacks made up. Almost all locations were to be fed by underfloor raceway and there would be "doghouses" at every location. Each little doghouse could accommodate two, duplex jacks (one on each side). Voice needed a duplex for itself (one phone one modem or fax machine) and I still needed an IBM and a DEC connection. I got one of the manufacturers to create a duplex jack, half RJ-12 (to feed a Balun panel)and half DEC MMJ. They were color coded black so there was no confusion.
Seems like a million years ago.
Sam
