Having been building a home in the past year, I hired out some low-voltage systems work to a local L.V. systems dealer who does both commercial and residential work. Being a web kind of guy over at SecurityInfoWatch.com, I was looking at running Ethernet through the entire home. After all, it was a “ greenfield ” project and it really wouldn't add much cost to have a network connection in many of the rooms, whether that's for computers or for future automation devices. I'm also thinking that I might run an Ethernet connection in the future to have a camera so I can watch the driveway.
Our local dealer came out and assessed the project and we left it to him. His installer came almost a month later, citing a number of excuses on why he had missed previous arrivals (that should have been my first clue!). Despite the lack of promptness, he ran the lines and made the drops and ran the cable to the garage where we had planned to place our data hub and satellite Ethernet modem. All looked well, and with other projects to finish (we were doing some of the other residential systems ourselves), we took his word on completion, said thanks with a paycheck, and lined up the drywall installers.
Fast forward several months and numerous construction delays and I finally hook up the house with an Internet service provider. We place the data hub and modem in the garage and start to look at the wires. Uh oh… big problem. Our installer apparently didn't know his Ethernet from his archaic phone lines, and didn't realize that IP ports aren't wired in series like old telephone runs, but rather are designed to be home pulls. Additionally, his RJ-45 connectors were sometimes randomly wired, making them incompatible for 10Base-T without some reconfiguring at the ports themselves. Thankfully, this guy didn't also do our security system, or I know we would have had the most false-alarm-plagued home on the block.
Needless to say, we're in the middle of figuring out how to get this corrected. But, the message to me was that this installer (who has since moved on to another gullible dealer), or others like him, might someday land a more significant and time-pressing project than doing systems wiring for a trade journalist's home. They might be wiring ports for a high-end IP surveillance application that shares a network for the company's data servers. Now, I'm not suggesting that many installers might be as incompetent as this one I found masquerading as a low voltage tech, but have you really assessed their ability (and yours) when it comes to designing and installing networked systems? If not, this is prime time to do so, before the technology passes by at warp 10.
Geoff Kohl, editor
SecurityInfoWatch.com
P.S. Many thanks to the years of service provided to Security Dealer by my friend and comrade in security and systems journalism, Susan Brady, former editor-in-chief of this venerable magazine. I know that I speak for everyone at Security Dealer magazine in wishing Susan the very best.
