Hot take: labeling patch cables with numbers is a waste of time

I spent two years labeling every single patch cable in our server room with those little flag labels. Last week a fiber contractor came in and just used different color cables for each VLAN and traced everything with a cheap toner in 10 minutes. Made my entire labeling system look like a hobby project. Does anyone else do color coding instead of labeling or am I missing something?

2 comments

2 Comments

parker_bell1d ago

Color coding works great until you've got 40 different VLANs and suddenly you're running out of distinct cable colors that don't look identical in dim light. How do you handle the overlap when you've got more VLANs than unique colors available?

ellis.charles1d ago

Read somewhere they use labels with tiny barcodes for the real messy setups.