Introduction
Below you will find information to assist you in becoming more comfortable with the equipment in your comms room or IT Closet.
Network Manager Appliance (NMA)
A network manager appliance is a dedicated, specialized hardware device that performs network management functions like monitoring, configuring, and securing a network
Switch(s)
You may find your switches look like the below, to manage these and update the Switch Ports to assign them to Occupiers see this guide here.
Extreme
Juniper
Cisco
Depending on the model of switch, you will have 8, 24 or 48 copper ports available + 4 fibre ports.
Copper ports are used to connect to your floor ports, via the patch panel
Fibre ports are used to link to switches on other floors or in other buildings
If a fibre port is in use, you cannot use the copper port with the same number
The physical lights above the switch ports can be helpful in letting you know the status of a port,
Green - device connected & in use
Orange - device connected, but port not configured
No light - no device connected
Please note that the ports along the top of the switch are all odd numbers, and the ports along the bottom are all even numbers. Please ensure you double-check you have the correct switch port number when checking these.
Stacking Cable
Switches can be linked together to form a stack, and each switch within the stack is referred to as a slot. To link the switches, a stacking cable is used.
To link the switches, stacking cables should be connected from port 2 on the first switch to port 1 on the next, and so on. On the last switch, port 2 should be linked back to port 1 on the first switch to complete the loop.
You can have up to 8 slots in a stack.
Patch Panel
The cables running from your floor / wall ports are terminated on patch panels by your cabling contractor. The numbers along the top of these panels should correspond to the numbers in your rooms.
To patch a floor / wall port, you should connect a PatchSee cable from the port on the patch panel to a port on the switch.
To manage your Floor Ports in Platform see this guide here.
Mediatrix
A Mediatrix is a type of analogue telephone adapter, which allows you to use analogue devices such as fax machines on your digital essensys system. Once a Mediatrix port has been configured (via a Platform case), you can patch from your floor/wall port patch panel to the Mediatrix (instead of to the switch).
Our standard 24 port model comes with a separate patch panel, which connects via a cable to the front of the Mediatrix. Smaller models have the ports on the Mediatrix device itself.
UPS
An Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) is installed to power your circuits and primary switch. This provides a temporary emergency back-up power source, in the event of a mains power supply failure.
The UPS is usually mounted within your rack, but if there is limited space then a floor standing version may have been installed instead.
The power cables that run between the UPS and the devices it's powering are orange IEC to IEC power cables.
