Communication:

Our site contact was difficult to communicate with at times. It felt as if we were waiting a long time to begin basic tasks because we had to wait for the site to approve everything. We needed to remind ourselves that organizations usually have to follow particular procedures. Additionally, our site contact was working with several people on this project and everyone involved had day jobs, so they could not devote a lot of time to this project. We had to be patient, and adjust our expectations for length of time between e-mail communications.

Truck Battery:

It turns out that the battery for the truck had a corroded connection with the negative end. This required a lot of help from friends, and creative planning for how to get around. Ultimately, Martin had to take it to the shop, which meant any and all troubleshooting fell onto us.

Cable Testers:

One of the biggest problems we ran into was that the tester for our CAT5 cable stopped functioning (the batteries died). At that point, we had only tested half of our male cables and 2 of our 8 female ports. While waiting for Martin to show up with new batteries for the tester, we started using higher level functions to test the cords and ports. Since we knew that some of the ports/cables worked, we used those to first test the computers to make sure their devices were working. From there, we rolled the computers around to different ports and pinging or running up to check the switch once we hooked them up with untested cables. By the time Martin arrived to take care of the tester, we had no real use for it.

“Bad” ports:

During the process of checking all the ports and cables, we ran across 3 that didn’t seem to work. We double checked the computers and patch cord we were using from computer to port, narrowing down the problem to the port, the cable connecting the port to switch, or the switch. At that point, we were pretty much stumped in regard to narrowing the problem further. Additionally, the cable that ran from port to switch was at minimum 80 feet through walls and ceilings, so if that cable was the problem, it was a big one. Using good troubleshooting practice (check the potential problems that are easiest to check) Ben switched out the computers and patch cables, and tested everything again, just to be certain that there was a problem before tearing out hours of carpentry work. As it turns out, all 3 of the “bad” ports worked on the second try. . .And the day was saved.

Carpentry:

Installation of wire tracks on the walls and running wire through the ceilings required us to work through a variety of small problems. There were areas in the ceiling that required us to run under or through a firewall, up and around large ducts and such. Since we didn’t have a stud finder, we also had to purchase and learn how to use wall anchor screws.

Open DNS:

After setting up stringent filtering settings, we could not remember or deduce the password for making changes. Of course there is the option to send the password to the email address on the account, however the filtering settings were so high that email access was blocked. Finally, Jonathon realized that we could reset the router to get rid of the filtering settings. This worked because the router is given a new IP address each time it is reset and the Open DNS had not yet been configured to apply the new IP each time.