Route/Switch, Firewalling, and infrastructure discussion.
How do you handle port labeling and documentation?
We finally have money to overhaul some of our older closets. So I have been doing a lot of planning. One of the biggest issues we have had is the fact that at least 60% of the time our port labels are wrong to the point what limited documentation we have is useless.
So my current plan is to have our helpdesk L1 support guy trace and test all the runs in that side of the building and rerun what ones that are dead(we have a butload of dead drops none labeled). I have never really been part of this planning phase, we are also shifting some of the patch panels(seriously I am 6ft tall and I need a ladder for 90% of our closets to reach, guess the last net admin was worried about goblins or gnomes or something ripping out the cables).
Therefore, my initial thought was label them by switch port. Well we waste a lot of time on figuring out where port security has been tripped. Though a lot of that is they used port sec to shutdown unused ports rather than just shutting down the port. However, since I am replacing the whole closet and tracing all the wires we can actually document unused ports so finding port sec violations should not be a problem.
While doing some research I found many people saying they do not or mention that it is pointless keeping a system because techs repatch things too often. I just don't see how that is a concern we have probably close to a 800 switch ports and we don't ever have to repatch cables. But if a port quits working I want techs to just be able to go ok and hook a cable tester into the patch panel without having to consult some documentation or map to find out where all the ports go on the patch panels. I get people have far far different environments this is more of me trying to figure out how to apply this to my network and environment.
So my current plan is just closet number-patch panel number-portnumber, so something like this 104B-C-48. Then that can be in the switch port description along with the location.
TLDR: I am working on relabeling every port on campus, I am looking at different ideas of how or why people label.




What are you using for port documentation now?
Most switch port descriptions are blank, and typically the ports are labeled by patch panels. Other then that there is no documentation. We(I say we because the whole IT department was replaced in less the 6 months) came into this job with like maybe 20 pages in Microsoft OneNote from the past 2 years. My plan as far as patch panel to switch port for my self is to keep it on our wiki.
We are one of those "don't label it, you'll only make it angry" groups. That said I've labeled the ports on the panels with a <room number>-<type>-ABCDEF type scheme. It worked really well for me with a small team of people but in this current job it just doesn't get done.
One of the packet pusher or some other network podcast talked about cataloging the patch cables and labeling them on both ends before you put them in production. You just get the number off one end and find its corresponding end in the switch port or patch panel side. You track the patch cable instead of tracking the port. <Cable Serial #A1: Switchport 2/3, patch port 203-Data-B> kinda thing. I like this because you don't have to trace cable through a tray with 500 other similar/like cables to find the two ends of one.
I've done something like that on a small scale in my office where I put a strip of colored electrical tape on the end of each cable that comes out of the 10 port switch in my office. I can just match it up to the Blue/Yellow to its mate on my lab table 20 feet away and know which port I need to work with on my switch and not accidently unplug one of the other blue cables that is running a beta server doing something.
At a minimum I do not think you are fully going to get away from a spreadsheet or database with a port/cable/port setup.
It isn't sexy, but I keep a spreadsheet per device, listing each port, location, purpose, etc..