Fritz You can get 'octopus cables' to emulate the rj21 patching. Doesn't help much if you need to pull a blade, but it is a help for general patching.
Billo Data Communications Co-Ordinator Information Technology & Telecommunications Hunter New England Health Service ph 0249 213804 fax 0249 213038 [email protected] >>> Fritz Buetikofer <[email protected]> 06/19/09 7:18 PM >>> Hi Richard Back in March 2008 I wrote a mail to the Enterasys mailing-list about our concerns with the increasing port density on switch blades. We do use for many years switches from Cabletron / Enterasys and have quite early realized the necessity for either switch blades with more than 48 ports and/or blades with special plugs like RJ21 (12x10/100) for environment with fibre installations, where the switch ports are directed towards media converters. Actually we do have four fat N7 switches with a large number of 7H4203-72 blades, which do have 6 RJ21 plugs. This is one environment with over 1000 fibre ports in the office. Then there are more than 10 N7 or N3 switches, where we use the same 7H4203-72 blades in conjunction with the MRJ21 wiring system. This is the successor of the old RJ21 system, which is limited to 10/100 only, because of the 4 wires used in this system. But as we had to go further with our local cabling projects and also the requirements of our heaviest users, we are now limited at 100 mbps and have started two years ago with the installation of MRJ21 systems and because of the lack of any MRJ21 switching blades from Enterasys have instead used 60 or even 72 port blades. But as you mention in your email, the cabling of those blades is not that simple (we call it: plug and prey, because we hope that none of these blades will ever fail !!) – and I have already placed a request to Enterasys for a network technician, who has three arms and tiny small fingers like a kid ;-) I append a picture of an N7 chassis, where we have put in two of the 72 port blades and you can see the bunch of 144 cables going up and right to the MRJ21 cabling system. Today we know, that placing two 72 port blades side-to-side is bad, there should be at least one slot empty inbetween. Also we have developed a special rack-mount kit for N3 chassis, so that the slots are vertical instead of horizontal. Then, since over two years we are talking to the Enterasys engineers to either bring out an 60/72 N-blade with the MRJ21 plugs. But this wish was delayed with the option, that with the Matrix-S switches appearing in Q3/09 a special blade should be available with the MRJ21 plugs. Regards, --Fritz. ___________________________ University of Bern Computer Services Department Fritz Buetikofer Senior IT Manager Gesellschaftsstrasse 6 CH-3012 Bern Switzerland Tel. +41 (0)31 631 3843 Fax. +41 (0)31 631 3865 Web. http://www.id.unibe.ch On 16.06.2009, at 16:52, Richard Hart wrote: > All, > Does anyone have any pictures of the 72 port blade for the N-series > chassis fully cabled? > We are interested in the blade, but are having difficulty justifying > the purchase of such a blade because it seems that cabling the blade > could be a problem. > Thanks, > Richard > > > Richard Hart > Telecommunications Engineer > Tidewater Community College --- To unsubscribe from enterasys, send email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe enterasys [email protected] --- To unsubscribe from enterasys, send email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe enterasys [email protected]
