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Technology

The Problem Of Unused Cabling 271

Posted by Hemos from the wonderfully-old-copper dept.
Makarand writes "Technological advances constantly render functional cable obsolete by demanding data transfers at higher rates which older cabling cannot support. New cables that support higher data rates are laid right over older wires. The old wires are simply left in place and abandoned. This interesting article talks about the problems caused by abandoned cabling. According to an estimate several billion feet of abandoned cable lies unused in the plenum spaces of buildings that allow air to circulate creating a fire hazard. Also, very few firms currently worry about removing cabling when they move out of a building."
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The Problem Of Unused Cabling More

The Problem Of Unused Cabling

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  • Cost to remove? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by satyap ( 670137 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:17AM (#7546718)
    Wonder how much it would cost to remove and recover the metals in unused cables, and would it be offset by the sale of the metal?

    • Re:Cost to remove? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Interfacer ( 560564 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:20AM (#7546731)
      I think it is safe to say that the hours you have to spend to remove all cabling are 100 times more expensive than the price you would get.

      "Hello sir, i have a few thousand feet of used cabling, you can have it for 5000$ OK?"

      kind regards,
      Interfacer.
    • Taking that the article says that landlords take it out of the deposit I guess not much. It might just not be worth the effort after employing someone to do it

      Rus

      • Re:Cost to remove? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:48AM (#7546813) Homepage
        Maybe. Remember that the policy here was that the cabling was to be removed after each tennant left. That means it is simply a case of removing any cable from the duct, as opposed to removing just the defunct cables from a tangle of spaghetti. I suspect that the latter would require a considerable quantity of time, and therefore money, to accomplish.

    • Re:Cost to remove? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mlush ( 620447 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:04AM (#7546891)
      Wonder how much it would cost to remove and recover the metals in unused cables, and would it be offset by the sale of the metal?

      Labour costs aside. I'd guess that (data) cabling is a pretty unattractive source of metals. Tons plastic would have to be burned to get to a useful amount of metal. Burning plastic produces all sorts of nasty compounds, which would have to be scrubbed from the emissions significantly boosting the costs.

      • Re:Cost to remove? (Score:5, Informative)

        by robla ( 4860 ) * on Monday November 24, 2003 @11:58AM (#7548632) Homepage Journal
        If you're after the metals, it's far more effective to granulate the cable [sssdynamics.com], and then screen the output. No burning involved, and in many cases, the plastic coating can also be recycled. This is reasonably common practice, and it works pretty well.
    • This depends on the amount.

      With my first boss we removed all cabling as the tiles didn't fit anymore. Selling the old cables funded:

      - the removal
      - replacing all BNC with CAT5 (in 1997)
      - a nice party for the company

      So it was worth the effort it took. (especially because the effort was limited to 'hey you, remove that junk' ;-))

    • Re:Cost to remove? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Niggle ( 68950 )
      Rather than try and salvage the metals from the cable, it would almost certainly be better to sell off the old cables as cables. Getting at the metal would involve getting rid of all the insulation etc. Selling them as cables means (at worst) putting new connectors on the ends.

      There might be legal issues preventing resale of some cables (toxic materials, fire regs. and so on).

    • Re:Cost to remove? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by idontgno ( 624372 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @09:14AM (#7547269) Journal
      Wonder how much it would cost to remove and recover the metals in unused cables, and would it be offset by the sale of the metal?

      Not nearly, if you factor in the cost of downtime caused by careless cable removal disrupting active cable in place. Beyond simple laziness, that's probably the reason I've seen the most for "It's not hurting anything, so just leave it in place."

      Our raised-floor facility across the hall from my office had 20 years worth of accumulated mainframe cabling, network cabling of three different Ethernet generations, and power cabling from 400 volt to 12vdc. And that's just the copper. Never mind three different kinds of fiber, 2 types of conduit, grounding cables (for the mainframe) complete with large ground planes glued to the subfloor, and several hundred serial cables (you know, DB-25 at each end).

      It's a miracle we had any uptime at all during the period when the system shop was removing all the dead copper.

    • Re:Cost to remove? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by vartvart ( 230582 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @11:44AM (#7548512) Homepage
      we recently completed a re-cabling job of over 130 drops. somewhere in the neighborhood of 4KM of cable was installed, and about the same was removed. our interconnect charged us about $2400 CAD to remove the old cable, and they did it on a weekend so as not to interrupt our employees.

      we've done this in a few areas in our building; removing the old cable each time at a marginal cost.

      we remove the old cable mainly because it looks aweful! we are in an old building with no walls in which to hide cables. ladder-racks are used to transport the cable and they would get overcrowded if we were to keep the old stuff around.

      what's the point of keeping old, solid-core, CAT5 around? some of it is so brittle that it literally breaks apart if you bend the cable!

      plus, our interconnect recycles the cable and gets a few buck back for the copper -- although not much from what i've been told.
    • I live in an old house (1840), in the UK, and when we had the floors up we found lead piping for gas lighting, which was the premium source of light before electicity came along.

      After admiring the historical quaintess of century and a half old technology, we pulled it up and sold it for enough to cover some of the costs of the woodwork repairs, then laid down CAT5 (attenuation in stone is atrocious, especially for 802.11a, so CAt5 is the backbone).

      I hope in another 150 years someone will find the cat5 wir

  • One good use (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GeckoFood ( 585211 ) <geckofoodNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:18AM (#7546723) Journal
    Several years ago, I took some of that old cabling and stripped out the copper wire. I then used that wire as the loop on fishing sinkers. Saved me a good $0.02 - $0.05 per sinker, and I got to go fishing all summer. Life's pretty good sometimes.
    • Our data center is also the distribution point for telephone in the building. We don't have a phone switch. All of our lines go out to TPC, and come back. Lots and lots of punchdowns.

      Our floor is covered with telephone cable clippings. The best use I've found is to cut them into 5" lengths and use them as twist ties to hold bundles of working cable together. My KVM switch went from a mess to something sexy. My fiber cabinet finally looks presentable. The trick is to make bundles of smaller bundles. Start

  • Cutting cabling (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The article mentions that it is now standard practice for companies leaving a building to cut the network/phone cabling just before they go.

    How damn stupid is that?? What else are they going to do, break the bloody windows?!

    • Re:Cutting cabling (Score:5, Informative)

      by sjlutz ( 540312 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:26AM (#7546754)
      The standard practice is to recover assets when leaving a building. Just like a company takes it's servers, desktop computers, chairs, and desks, it also takes the relatively expensive network hook up equipment. This generally means the patch panels and the network racks. One rack, 6 or 7ft high, entirely populated with patch panels could easily have cost $4,000.

      Now, in some cases, people are jerks and do not take the time to cut the wires as close to the patch panels as possible. I have seen some cut where the wires enter the room (ussually through the ceiling). This makes re-using the wires impossible since there isn't enough left to do the hookups.

      • Re:Cutting cabling (Score:2, Interesting)

        by xclr8r ( 658786 )
        Sure they can take the patch panels, but cutting the cables is rediculous. They can disconnect the telco connectors from the punch blocks and take their equipment (thus leaving the cabling intact).
        This cutting of cable sounds more like unscrupulous contractors at work.
        Money saved and resources usage reduced. The Planet will thank you

      • The standard practice is to recover assets when leaving a building.

        My wife just went through this. She moved from a small office to a bigger office, and we left the Cat-5 wiring and patch panels behind. We took the switches, but all the wall jacks and the patch panel stayed behind.

        The issue is what is considered to be "assets". The problem is many of these improvements could quite easily be considered "capital improvments" which need to stay with the property, even if you move out. I think wiring e

      • Even if the people were to cut the wires as close to the patch panel as possible, wouldn't this be the corporate equivalent of the gradual degraduation of teleomeres?

        Eventually, after a building had four or five companies the cables would be so short as to make it impossible to repair the wiring.

        Surely it would be more cost effective to have standard connectors (RJ45's or whatever) rather than individually tied down cables?

    • Re:Cutting cabling (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:40AM (#7546795)
      What else are they going to do, break the bloody windows?!

      Bill G already took care of that. :)

    • Re:Cutting cabling (Score:4, Funny)

      by putaro ( 235078 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:50AM (#7546820) Journal
      The logic being it's their cabling. The last startup I did, the previous tenants had done exactly that. The cabling was cut within about two feet of the ceiling. There was a bit of slack in the cables, though, and we were cheap, so we wound up with our patch panels right up at ceiling level. Saved us a bunch of time and money upfront though any work afterwards had to be done on top of a ladder.
    • We also take all of the locks with us, and the security system.

      This is simply an example of how businesses and individuals work quite differently in an area where people assume things are much the same. Businesses rent the space, not usually the facilities (ie phone, security, etc), so most of the phone equipment, including those lines they're cutting, were put in by the business, and are taken from place to place. For many people it's just not worth the effort to take the lines completely out, so cutting

    • Re:Cutting cabling (Score:4)

      by faedle ( 114018 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @11:55AM (#7548600) Homepage Journal
      They mentioned one of the reasons in the article: concern that a competitor might be able to use the infrastructure.

      Unfortunately, building managers are usually part of the problem. Take this example of a startup I dealt with. We moved into a basement suite of a large office building in the center of town. The building management knew what our business was, knew we were likely to need telephone lines. But when we finally moved in, guess what? There was no cabling from our suite to the phone room. We had to install about 250 feet of plenum-rated phone wiring.

      Now, here's the problem. So, time comes for us to move to larger facilities. We were going to sell the cable as scrap. We ask for access to the common areas so we can retrieve the cable. Guess what? Building management now considers the cable "theirs" and won't provide us access to the phone room to remove it.

      What did we do? Sawed it off at the entrance to our suite. Why? Because the building management wouldn't either compensate us for the price of installing the cable nor allow us to remove it. We paid for it, it's not theirs, so.. get out the hacksaw.

      Unfortunately, this is far more common than you'd believe. Building managers often look at high-tech companies as a cheap way to "update infrastructure" in older buildings without paying for it. In our case, the entire building, as a result of a lot of dot.com activity, now has fiber between floors, CAT-5 throughout, multiple electrical entries, etc. Who paid for all these upgrades? Not the building, that's for sure.

      • Re:Cutting cabling (Score:3, Informative)

        by 5KVGhost ( 208137 )
        There was no cabling from our suite to the phone room. We had to install about 250 feet of plenum-rated phone wiring.

        Wow, that sucks. Wonder why they didn't have any cable installed?

        What did we do? Sawed it off at the entrance to our suite. Why? Because the building management wouldn't either compensate us for the price of installing the cable nor allow us to remove it. We paid for it, it's not theirs, so.. get out the hacksaw.

        Golly, do you think that the previous tenant might have done the same thing

  • Fish (Score:5, Informative)

    by Stile 65 ( 722451 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:20AM (#7546730) Homepage Journal
    I've used old cabling to fish through the new cabling. I'm lazy like that.
    • That won't work very well if, as the article suggests :

      1) you don't know where the cabling runs,
      2) the previous tenant cuts the wires.

    • Re:Fish (Score:3, Funny)

      by kriston ( 7886 )
      I've tried this. The old cables stretch and break. First the jacket stretches, then the copper stretches. When I'm done pulling I get to watch the copper slowly creep out of the ends of the cables while the jacket retracts back but the copper doesn't. It was really creepy in a dark attic the first time it happened.

  • creating a fire hazard? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Wonda ( 457426 )
    allow air to circulate creating a fire hazard


    i'd think the cables block the airflow, rather than start it??
    • The real fire hazard is due to the insulation on the cables burning or melting and emitting all sorts of poisonous fumes. Older cables are very bad for this. I shudder at the thought of a serious fire in some of the buildings described by posters- if the whole floor void (and presumably the risers) are chock full of all that plastic.

      *Some* modern cables are rated LSZH or LS0H- meaning "Low Smoke Zero Halogen" which shows that cable firms are considering this issue.

    • Re:creating a fire hazard? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @09:02AM (#7547193) Journal
      Which is why building codes require special jacketed cables for use un plenum spaces (ie: plenum rated). If you install non-rated cables in the plenum space you are breaking the law, and could be liable to future tenants for remove of the non-complying cabling. Yes, that fact is usually ignored since nobody pulls a building permit when retrofitting low-voltage cabling and therfor there's no inspector to make sure it is done correctly (or, at least, to code).

      As a structural engineer, I deal with folks every day who do things "wrong" but they've never had a building fall down. I call it Luck, as defined by the myriad little things which don't have any reproducable/quantifiable strucutral value which - in the real world - tend to help out a bit (friction, drywall screws, adhesive on gun-nails, etc.). Combine that with safety factors approaching 3 and the rarity for a building to see a code-required load (usu. less than 2% chance per year) and builders and owners get away with a lot of $#!+.

      The fact is that the actual danger is fairly low, but when it's your family member that get's turned into medium steak - crispy on the outside with a warm red center - suddenly the $50,000 to remove the cabling seems like a small price to pay (and would have been a small price compared to the settlement or jury award).

      Well, I didn't mean for this to sound so gloom-and-doom. Remember that crispy human with gypsum and ash crust requires multiple failures - bad/blocked exits, non- or sub-functioning alarm and fire supression, ignition source, flammables. Keep your buildings well maintained and you can handle a bit of non-compliance.

  • Passing the buck... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by danielrm26 ( 567852 ) * on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:22AM (#7546736) Homepage
    This is one of those situations where it's just so *easy* to not take responsibility. I think the final solution in the article is best -- require a fairly large deposit when people move in, on top of requiring them to pay to install and remove the cable they use. If they don't remove it for whatever reason, you just take it out of their deposit.

    This is the most logical way to handle the problem, but it puts the business using this method at a disadvantage becuase they are possibly requiring higher deposits than competitors.

    • Disposal deposits (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:49AM (#7547106) Homepage Journal
      I've considered this idea more generally in the past... paying a 'disposal fee' up-front on new goods to pay for their end-of-life costs. There are two problems with this idea:

      1: Technology changes, and those end-of-life costs are going to change, sometimes up, sometimes down. This in itself isn't a terrible problem, but it couples into problem 2.

      2: Disposal escrow would wind up creating some huge lumps of money. IMHO, whenever there's a huge lump of money, there's also a class of people who will find a way to attach themselves to it and start sucking it dry. In other words, that lump will never survive to do what it was supposed to do - pay disposal costs. Relative to item 1, someone (from that class) will find a 'new technology' to handle disposal and use the fund to develop that new technolgy. Maybe it'll work, maybe not, but odds are that the point will have been to gain access to the money, not to develop technology. Let's presume that 50% of the time the technology falls through, and the money's gone. We're right back where we started, only with a broken promise and either an environmental mess or the need for another government bailout.
    • The problem is, as the tenant deposits more and more money with the landlord, the landlord's incentive to cheat on the supposed removal services goes up. If the removal costs are as large as implied by the article, don't you think more than a few unscrupulous and/or lazy landlords will retain their deposits while not actually removing the wires themselves ?
    • Actually, requiring the removal of old cabling when you leave a space could be disastrous. Sure, you'll get all the cat5 you ran, as well as the cabling supporting the security and climate control system, and about 100 feet of twinax that does something impossibly important for the grumpy men on the 13th floor.

      The landlord should bear the burden of cable management in the plenum spaces. They should install basic cabling, and a tenant should be allowed to install better, on the condition that they leave
      • Actually, requiring the removal of old cabling when you leave a space could be disastrous. Sure, you'll get all the cat5 you ran, as well as the cabling supporting the security and climate control system, and about 100 feet of twinax that does something impossibly important for the grumpy men on the 13th floor.

        I had a client whose neighbor in the next suite hired some crazy Bulgarian network installers who offered to pull the old 10base2 coax out of the ceiling while they were putting in the new Cat5. But

    • I've managed two major office moves in my career. In both cases, we demolished 100% of the interior walls to get the configuration we required. The cable came out as a side effect of the demolition. How common is it for a tennant to move in and leave the existing walls? In most big office buildings, it doesn't seem to be common at all.

  • Taking the article is already /.'ed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) * <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:22AM (#7546737) Homepage
    I can't RTFM so I will just say that if you look at some of the mess that companies actually leave such as old cat5 cables 1/2 hanging out the walls as well as some of the under floor.

    I did work at a DC once where to lay in new cable under the floor you had to physically have someone to push other cables aside so you could get another cable in. There was meant to be 3 ft of room between the tiles and the concrete floor. IT was all full of cables.

    They had a lot of downtime as each time your moved one cable it ended becoming disconnected from the switch or the machine. Soon went bust

    Rus

  • Space.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hughk ( 248126 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:26AM (#7546753) Journal
    The main thing about the older networks in particular was that the cables need space, lots of it and ducts get kind of full quickly.

    Removing cable can be a little tricky (you don't really want to put new strain on the production cables), but it is generally recyclable which can pay for the operation. However, if you start removing things, you had better make sure that the cables are tagged.

  • Not so sure (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:33AM (#7546771) Homepage Journal
    I don't know if I really believe this article all that much. A couple years back, at the place I work (*cough* will be unemployed from after Wednesday), they upgraded the network to CAT-6 and three times the ports. That meant they had to rewire the entire front office cubefarm, which is two stores with a 6" subfloor each, and wiring columns running between stories.

    When all those cables converge on a wiring closet, they start to get bundled up pretty high. There's almost no room to run additional cables, plus it would be a huge unsightly mess. We hired an outside contractor to do the job, so they did professional work and disposed of the old wiring. They almost had to...with a 6" subfloor, you either pull cables through with the old wiring, or rip up every single carpet square and floor tile. I can't imagine this situation being much different for other companies.

  • You think unused cabling is a problem... (Score:4, Funny)

    by rodney dill ( 631059 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:36AM (#7546782) Journal
    What about the problem of used [theregister.co.uk]cabling.
    • Holy jeebus. I can just see some new tech that they just hired to do some server maintenance...

      Boss: "Okay Fred, you'll be working right over here." (beep! Door opens.)

      Fred: (pauses for 3 sec and looks around) "I quit."
    • Really, this situation isn't too uncommon. I think that some network techs become like black widow spiders when it comes to cabling... laying it like a web to trap unwary visitors. Look closely... anyone see a maintenance person trapped in there somewhere?

      Seriously though, as far as cable volume this is nothing. Right now one of the sites I'm working at has over 200 cables, and when all your networking hardware is in one room running it to a connection becomes slightly messy no matter how you do it. Grant

  • Fire Codes (Score:5, Informative)

    by shepd ( 155729 ) <slashdot.org@gmail.3.14com minus pi> on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:40AM (#7546793) Homepage Journal
    Any place with a decent set of fire codes, and people who are actually following them, shouldn't be worrying. FT-5/Plenum cable is simply not a danger.

    Now, if residential "wood burns faster so who cares" FT-1 vinyl cable is used, you get what you pay for. That being said, if the fire inspector ever sees that stuff, you'll probably be looking at a really juicy fine.
  • Just put a sign out front, Free Cable.
    I guarantee you will get some electrician come pull every piece out. And it will not cost you a dime.
    • But does it have HBO?
    • I used to work at a University that benefitted from a similar deal. A local company moved to new premises and my boss managed to arrange to salvage cable from their old building. We picked up hundreds of feet of old Ethernet cable that we could not have afforded otherwise. Mind you, this was back in the days when the orginal 1/2-inch thick coax was all the rage, so it was sturdy stuff. We rewired the University library with it, converting from 9600 baud X.25 to 10Mb Ethernet.

  • Cost of removing cable (Score:3, Insightful)

    by masoncooper ( 443243 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @07:59AM (#7546855)
    When our office decided to re-cable we were told by the building that we couldn't pull new cable unless we removed all the old cable. It turns out the previous tenants had re-cabled at least three times before. We were initially quoted tens of thousands of dollars to have it removed but finally found a contractor who would remove it all for just a few thousand. As it turns out he had horribly underestimated the job and upon completion, expressed to us how much he had under-quoted us but still held to his quote.
    All in all, having pre-existing wiring is a double-edged sword. New tenants might like the idea of saving on cabling and such, but also can come back and bite you when it comes time to upgrade.

  • Dont buildings come with services over there? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by carndearg ( 696084 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:00AM (#7546864) Homepage Journal
    Judging by my several employers over the last few years the norm here in the UK for newer office space at least is that the building is put up with structured cabling already in place. This is usually cat.5, which happily takes care of any network or phone cabling requirements. This is seen as a major selling point for the office so the landlord is happy to provide it.
    It surprises me that landlords over there do not take the same view, though it is possible that there is some liability question under US law of which I am unaware.

    We are not without our cabling problems here though, my first job was at a major university, in a 1930s building. The original rubber insulated telephone cables were disused but still in place, and they had coagulated into a malevolent black mass in the risers and cable ducts. I am told they have now been removed, I pity the poor people who had to do it, they must have had to cut them out with an angle grinder.

    • We moved into this building in the 60's, theres all sorts of cables, coax (digital video, rf, analog video, probably some old networking), fibre (video, av and computer), multicore (audio, cat5, old phone cables, rs232, or just 2 wires to complete a circuit), power (a variety of AC and DC voltages), and probably some more.

      We are talking *tens* of thousands of miles of cable throughout the building.
    • I am told they have now been removed, I pity the poor people who had to do it, they must have had to cut them out with an angle grinder.

      100% chance that those cables and their dried goop are actually still there.

    • Some newer office spaces geared towards very small businesses (5-10 people) often have "built-in" networking and phone services. You get your own LAN, internet access, and phone service for some add-on price to your monthly rent.

      The problem with this model is that really requires that the building's office layout be fairly static. Many US office buildings, especially the larger ones, are huge empty spaces, made up mainly of cubicles, and even the "real" offices are made of modular partition panels. Sinc
    • I think the problem is existing buildings, many of which were put up before Ethernet existed. I think companies buying and renting space will probably figure that as part of their move-in cost. Different companies have different needs, so there is no one-size-fits-all kind of solution. If a company were to decide that they want fiber between certain points of the building then that is another matter that can't be accounted for by a building seller or landlord.
    • It surprises me that landlords over there do not take the same view, though it is possible that there is some liability question under US law of which I am unaware.

      It really depends on the particulars of the tennant and building owner.

      With smaller spaces the company moving in or the building owner will often pay a departing tennant to leave network and phone cabling in place along with things like furniture and phone switches. In sublease situations it's not uncommon for the master tennant to require the

  • Interplanetary network (Score:3, Funny)

    by lplatypus ( 50962 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:00AM (#7546869)
    According to an estimate several billion feet of abandoned cable lies unused in the plenum spaces of buildings that allow air to circulate creating a fire hazard.

    Several billion feet? That's not long enough to reach Mars even when it came really close recently [slashdot.org]: it was still over 180 billion feet away.

    Nevertheless, there is plenty of cable for making a link to the moon, which is merely about 1.3 billion feet from Earth. Of course, one may need quite a few bridges along the way to keep the signal alive and deal with the variety of recycled cable types :-) Also, the cable may need to be attached to one of the earth's poles to avoid getting wrapped around the earth by the moon's rotation.

    Wow, a cable to the moon would be quite an amazing feat of engineering. Do you think it may be remotely possible?

  • Some states actually have laws about this... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Iphtashu Fitz ( 263795 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:07AM (#7546902)
    I know that here in Massachusetts the state laws require contractors to remove unused cable from plenums, raised floors, etc. when doing any renovation that involves those spaces. As was explained to me by one contractor the primary reason is the toxic gasses that can be released by PVC & other plastic coatings when they catch fire. Apparently contractors can be fined if they don't remove unused cables. This actually caused a problem at one place where I worked - we had 3/4 of a floor in a renovated office and the other 1/4 was vacant. When that space was leased out it was rebuilt and one day in the middle of the construction all our network connections on the walls between our space and this other space suddenly stopped working. The contractors incorrectly assumed that these were old cables so they ripped them out. Needless to say they ended up paying to have new cables run, but that took a couple days...

  • Give it away. . . (Score:4, Informative)

    by bplipschitz ( 265300 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:08AM (#7546909)
    The right cabling makes perfect feedline for HF radio applications. I removed well over 300 feet of Twinax from the building I work in, and I could take all I wanted for free. [I now feed a 40-meter dipole with it]. The loss characteristics are about the same is RG-8.

    All you amateur radio operators/SWL'ers, offer to remove the stuff for free.

    One caveat, it is really dirty work, depending upon the building.
    • i got two big rolls of rg58!! want it? (u gotta come get it..)
    • And when you work with high band stuff, up in the Ghz range, and you need the really BIG (1 5/8" Andrew) cable, offer to tear it out of an old cell site or other transmission tower for free.

      And, if you're crafty (like my father tends to be), you can make a nice side business of selling used cable to other ham operators.
  • You mean they were not using the fire resistant (and more expensive) "Plenum Grade" Cable.
    • Not fire-resistant, but fire-retardant. It still burns (no, it doesn't just smolder). The insulation is formulated such that it does not give up toxic gases while burning. The rationale is that plenum spaces are those which convey air through the building and anything inside those spaces must not become toxic when burning. Note that not every riser is necessarily a plenum space. The NEC does not call for plenum-rated cabling in a non-plenum riser. It is also not immediately obvious to the casual obser

  • outsource cabling ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cedric C. Girouard ( 21203 ) <cedricgirouard+s ... m ['il.' in gap]> on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:10AM (#7546932)

    In montreal, we have quite a few buildings where several companies are installed, and when it comes to cabling, you just can not install anything yourself. You rent the space, you rent the lines.

    You need a new drop ? No problem, a contractor is on site to install them, label them, keep track of them.

    It can lead to some pretty conflicts, but overall, when you get used to the fact that your responsability ends at the wall jack, it's a pretty good way to relieve us IT guys from one of the most boring area of the job.

  • Some Thoughts from an Expert... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lonb ( 716586 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:48AM (#7547105) Homepage
    I used to run an ISP that was owned by a real estate firm. We wired many buildings in NYC and provided additional services, such as wiring tenant offices and providing Internet access. There are several considerations not pointed out here:

    A. Limitation of Knowledge. The guys who do a lot of the wiring work don't know what the cables do -- believe it or not. My two most experienced, and best, pullers couldn't tell you what ethernet was if their life depended on it. Heck, I had one guy who didn't know what T568b was, but could punch down Cat5 to a T568b block in five seconds flat. All they knew was what they were told to install.

    In the past I had specifically had discussions with them about pulling cables out. Unless they are explicitly directed by the landlord of the building (who knows even LESS than they do) they will not, and probably should not, touch cables that are pre-existing. This is due to fear of not knowing what they could be doing, and worse, what they are, or aren't, doing.

    B. Cross-office runs. In one of my buildings, for example, each floor was an average of 12,500 feet. The average office was 800 sq. ft. Most floors had upwards of 10-12 offices on them. In order to get riser pulls (cabling run in the central, vertical risers of the building) to office drops (termination points for those cables), these typically ran over the other offices. It was typical for the first office, closest to the riser) to have anywhere from 20-40 cables running through their plenum cores that had nothing to do with that office.

    Imagine you come in Monday morning, after a neighbor moved in that weekend, to find all your cabling (data, phone, cable TV, leased lines) had be removed by the overly eager data people.

    C. Simple CBA. The bottomline for any real estate firm is, well, the bottomline. The risk of fire due to overly full cabling space is fairly minimal compared to the risk of losing money and facing lawsuits -- or worse, losing tenants.

    The cost of pulling existing cabling plus the risk of damaging infrastructure minus the value of open space is just not in the favor of making the change. It's really that simple.

    When all is said and done, with my engineering cap on, I'd like to see thorough documentation on cables and better diagrams of floors showing what cable goes where -- and it's really not that hard. But try telling a rushing tenant that they have to wait two weeks while your engineering team documents cables, yeah right.

    Also, with my engineering cap on, I'd make one suggestion for anyone moving into a new office. If you are going to pull out the old cables, and it is in roughly strong strength, use it to snake your new cables! That's what we often did. There are a few snares with this trick to watch out for, but if you have good pullers they'll know what to do -- if you give them the green light.

    • Good comment. I occasionally end up pulling cable with the company we subcontract for cable runs. I have NEVER seen them remove cable. Simply because of the reason you stated. They don't know which to remove. If it were a case of removing all the cable, sure they'd do that. But 98% of the time the runs are being made to add to existing networks. I've never looked into it, but I've always been told (when I asked why we don't remove the unused ancient cabling) that it's not worth the time you pay the guys to

  • Fire codes can fix this (Score:3, Informative)

    by Wansu ( 846 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @08:51AM (#7547122)

    As soon as this issue appears on the radar screens of fire marshalls, it will be dealt with. Restricting air flow in the plenums and having materials which emit toxic fumes during combustion in suspended ceilings would get most firemen wound up.

  • Not universal practice (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mwood ( 25379 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @09:06AM (#7547220)
    We actually had a flag day, a few years ago, when a load of new comm. gear came in. The comm. guys spent days pulling up several layers of old cable 'cos they needed the space for the new. It made working under the floor much nicer. Now if we could get the power guys to stop laying 100kg of copper on top of our phone and data cables.... (Yeah, a structured wiring plan would help.)

    And whenever I retire a cable, or find that some less industrious person has abandoned one, I pull it up *now* before it becomes part of a mat that's too much to deal with. It's a great way to be productive late on Friday afternoon when you don't want to touch production software just before the weekend. But then, I actually fasten the holddown screws on connector shells, too, so I'm obviously a fringe nutcase. :-|
  • I have no problem taking any of your... older... non-advanced... cat5 cables. Please, allow me to help fight pollution.
  • ...them's *pull strings*!
  • I'm using the same CAT5 that I installed in 1997 for my network. 'Course, I'm still at 100 Mb, but that's not too bad. What continual upgrades are being referred to here?
  • It is estimated that 60 billion feet of cable have been abandoned in the plenum spaces that allow air circulation through a building, creating a fire hazard. Older cable could be particularly toxic in a fire.

    Everywhere I have worked in recent years, local code has required the use of firestop at each floor with Vertical cabling. That way, there is no airflow between floors. Also, the plenum coated cabling is fire resistant. I have seen some abandoned cabling, but it's never been that big of a deal.
  • I work in a typical broadcast installation that has seen a lot of changes over about 10 years. Each time, new coaxial cable was laid under the raised floor. First it was composite analog video and analog audio, then composite digital video and seperate AES/EBU audio, now 4:2:2 component digital video with embedded AES/EBU audio. Not to mention the addition and subtraction of channels and services, installation of new video switchers, routers, etc.

    Today, there is 1 foot of solid coax under the entire rai

  • The solution to this is easy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iphayd ( 170761 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @10:26AM (#7547779) Homepage Journal
    There should be some legislation that makes it illegal to cut the lines without removing them completely. When you vacate a space, the wiring should either be useable or gone.

  • Pfff....fire hazards are everywhere. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @10:45AM (#7547918) Homepage
    It is estimated that 60 billion feet of cable have been abandoned in the plenum spaces that allow air circulation through a building, creating a fire hazard. Older cable could be particularly toxic in a fire.

    I like how the article pushes the "fire hazard" angle, but doesnt' bother to look at which cabling, specifically, is the problem. It portrays it as a problem caused by companies installing network/phone wire recently, when the real problem wire is much older. Most new wire installed by knowledgeable installers is plenum rated-- which means it's self-extinguishing and not nearly as toxic when burned. The nastiest-burning wire you'll find in ceilings is the old pink-beige jacketed 25-200 pair phone cabling that was installed forty years ago by Ma Bell! What's more, much of this nasty multipair wire can't be pulled out because it's still being used. On top of it all, the toxic-fire hazard posed by wiring in the plenum space is miniscule compared to the nasty plastic crap that's in an office itself-- if there's a fire, that cheap desk chair burning is gonna put out nastier smoke than a bundle of cabling. Also, plenum air doesn't generally get pumped into anyone's office. Plenum spaces are used as return-air systems, so any smoke in there is going primarily into the building's air shaft, where it will set off a smoke detector that sends the air out a roof vent rather than back into the building.

    Don't get me wrong, as a network cabling installer I'm all for the removal of old cable. I've seen cable trays so packed with old crap that I couldn't get another run through. But the need of some people to pose every problem as a dire safety hazard drives me up a tree. I'm willing to bet that there are very few buildings where the communications wiring is even one of the top five fire-safety hazards.

  • What will Network Admins 20 years from now dig up and laugh about if we remove all the outdated cabling.

    You ever find something really really old and put it to use as a joke? I found an old 16 port lantronix (LTR16T) 10-baseT hub that went for 849 dollars when it was new sitting the bottom of an old storage unit at work.
  • Here at the 'oldest girls' school in the US' I can show you some wiring history! The vast majority of this school's been around almost 270 years. Some of our basements are a real treat.

    There's everything down there from the original 1900's-era wiring (before standardized sockets), to the refits done in the 30's, to the stuff put in a few times after that. One time fuse blew a few years ago and it took our electician almost 4 hours to FIND it.

    When we got DSL a few years back, the phone company didn't ever
  • The building went up in 1932. Our problem isn't unused cabling (of which there is plenty.) We have unused natural gas lines!

    But back on the subject, running through the basement is a massive nasty bundle of electrical and communication cable. It runs along the ceiling and seems to get bigger around every rennovation. When you talk about trunk lines, this literally grows like one.

    I lucked out in that one of my predicessors ran multimode fiber back in the early 90's. Lots of multimode fiber. Finding the e

  • You may have this problem at work, and really, it's not a problem to you, since everything is working as it should. It becomes a problem when, suddenly, critical PC #962 loses networking capability, and you have to find out which cable is dead and where between it and #961 other cables.

    I think this is the point between where people do one of several things:

    a) Run a whole new cable if the distance isn't huge, then you have #962 cables, and this does add up over time.

    b) Split an existing cable with a hu
  • to keep well documented cabling. A policy of requiring a tenent to remove cabling when leaving is usually a good idea. However, sometimes the wiring is generic and well documented, and an asset to the next tenant. For instance, Cat 5 from several outlets in each room to a big patch panel in another room. In these cases, it should be possible to sign an agreement to leave such cable in place. The exiting tenent saves the removal costs. The entering tenant saves the installation costs.

    Even when the ca

  • An Idea Just in time for Xmas! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dolemite_the_Wiz ( 618862 ) on Monday November 24, 2003 @01:27PM (#7549395) Journal
    Take all the unused cabling and thread unused AOL Trial CD's and you have yourself a great way to trim that Tree!

    Dolemite
    ________________

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