The physical network

1. What I walked into

A network pulled in over twenty years, always wherever and however it was needed at the time. Cables ran unlabelled, and the production machines shared a broadcast domain with the guest Wi-Fi.

• finding a faulty port took hours
• there was no drawing that matched reality
• a single uplink joined the production halls

2. What I changed or built

We went through it cabinet by cabinet: new patch panels, labelled cables, tidy cable management. The network was split into segments, with the firewall deciding what crosses between them.

• 14 VLANs: production, office, cameras, phones, guests and the rest
• doubled uplinks on every distribution switch
• every port recorded in NetBox, with both ends of its cable

3. The numbers

25 rack cabinets, more than 1,200 documented ports, 14 VLANs. A faulty cable is found in minutes now, because the drawing and the building agree. No distribution switch hangs on a single cable.

4. The tools, and why these

Ubiquiti in the access layer for its central management, WatchGuard at the edge because of the existing contract and rule base. NetBox because documentation only stays current when it lives where the work is planned.

5. What it meant for the business

An infected office machine can no longer reach the production network. Losing one hall no longer takes the others with it, and extending the network is planning, not archaeology.