Cable Tracing
Guys, buy yourselves a cable tracer! (aka "Tone and Probe" kit)
Plug the signal generator thingy in at one end, Wave the probe at the patch panel outlets or the cables protruding from them until you hear the warbling tone loud and clear. That's the other end.
With 100BaseT you can even trace a cable without breaking the datacomms for more than a few seconds, You inject the tone on the 7/8 and 4/5 pairs which 100BaseT does not use. 1000BaseT uses all eight wires, but much hardware will downgrade itself to 100BaseT if you disconnect 4/5/7/8, and most users won't notice the slowdown). You use one of those 2:1 network splitters as the injector. (You know, one of those thingles that connects 4/5 to 1/2 and 7/8 to 3/6 on the second outlet so you can run two 100BaseT Ethernet channels down a single Cat5e premises cable. Naughty but occasionally nice, compared to a two-week wait and a three-figure bill to install a printer).
Why? Well, there are nightmare undocumented spaghetti wiring tangles. And then there are anally retentive tightly bundled and tied installations that look like works of art, except that someone put the wrong numbers on the ends on one or more wires. Both problems easily solved.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
