CIS Internship
Summer 2007
By
Walter Wahlstedt
During the summer of 2007, I did an internship through Computer Information Systems Incorporated located in Corbin, Ky. CIS works with business, schools and government institutions to provide a wide array of services from basic network cable install to a full network setup. They deal with data as well as phone systems.
I was assigned as a Level one technician with the idea that I would shadow a tech in almost every aspect of technology that CIS deals with and, then, settle into a specific area. The area I wanted to learn more about was switches and routers; that where I ended up. Because I was a level one tech, I typically didn’t stay on one project from start to finish. Instead, I worked on many different projects ranging from pulling wire to configuring and installing switches to installing security systems. The skills I learned came from the projects that I worked on.
Pulling wire was one of the first tasks I was assigned when I started at CIS. My supervisor was always saying, “You aren’t qualified to work on anything in the IT world until you have pulled some wire.” So everyone under him was required to pull wire at some point in their career whether they were a level one or a level three tech.
One of the most interesting and dangerous pulls I did was in the attic of a dorm at Oakwood mental facility. They had just built three new dorms, and we were doing the wire pulls for the security system. This particular pull was going to be run down into the doorframe for the door lock system. My job was to crawl across metal duct work into an attic space over the porch area. Then, I was to drill a hole in the top of the frame while sitting in a space hardly big enough for me to sit up and no place to rest anything on. There was no light except the small light on my hat. On top of all this, it was about 130 degrees in the attic. Once I reached the top of the door frame, I noticed the two other techs had taken a light fixture out of the ceiling. Smothered by the heat of the attic, I put my face through the hole to get some fresh air. As soon as I rested my face there, the sweat poured off me on to the ground. The guys scattered like ants in a rainstorm; it was hilarious. They handed me the drill, and I started the hole. The next thing I know, they are yelling, “Stop!” I had missed the door frame. Fortunately, I didn’t go all the way through the frame; therefore we didn’t have a problem. I re-adjusted the drill over the doorframe and finished the hole. Before I knew it I was back on the ground breathing the nice fresh air.
Another memorable place was Marymount Hospital. We did several pulls there, but the one I remember the most was in the doctor’s lounge. We had to go from a closet on the other side of the wall, across the ceiling, and down another wall. When we walked into the lounge I was shocked. I had never seen anything so lavish in a hospital before. There were huge leather couches and recliners, a very large flat panel TV, and all kinds of different foods to eat. It was almost lunch time, and I was getting hungry. I was tempted to get a little snack, but I resisted. Once I got over my shock we continued with the run. The hardest part was getting the wire down the wall. The problem was a metal cross section about three feet down that prevent us from getting the wire to the bottom. We had to get a drill down in the wall and make a hole. We could barely reach the metal section due to the layout of the wall and once we did we almost lost the bit. Despite all the difficulties, we finally got the wire through and completed the run.
The final wire pull I’d like to talk about was one at LMU. We were running some data lines for the wireless nodes that would be placed at various locations throughout the building. Because the building was new, the runs were pretty easy. One day they needed a port for a cash register so I went to work. I had to find a way to mount the spool of ethernet wire so that when I pulled on it the wire would unravel. Then, I grabbed a ladder and started pulling the wire through the various different wire trays from the communications closet to the register. Once there, it had to go down the wall. I had to figure out the best place to run it. There was an electrical box in the area so I knew to keep it away from that because I would run into the conduit that fed the box. I picked a spot. I had some trouble getting the wire to come down the wall because of all the insulation, but eventually it gave way and I got the wire to the new box.
Now that I had some experience in pulling wire, my supervisor was ready to give me a bigger duty. He told me I would be working on a large switch install for LMU. They had just built a very large facility for their medical program, and we would be doing the data networking. The first part of the job was un-boxing the fifty networking switches and putting them in a temporary rack so that we could upgrade the firmware and program them. It took me about two days to un-box and rack all fifty switches.
After I got them racked I had to upgrade the firmware which was pretty easy. I just went to the manufacture’s website, downloaded the latest firmware and applied it to each switch using a telnet program. Zach, the networking guru that was helping me, already had a template for writing the configuration file. All I had to do was take the relevant information for this project and put it into the template. Now this may sound simple, but it’s not as simple as it seems. Even though I have a template, each switch is a little different. Therefore, every time I program a switch I have to alter the template. This can cause major problems if you alter the wrong thing or forget to alter something. This took a while, but I eventually got it done.
Now, I had to un-rack all the switches so that we could transport them to LMU. Once we got them there, I had to rack them again and then patch each port on the patch panel to the switch. Then, I patched the switch to the router or another stack of switches. If the link between the two switches didn’t come up I had to figure out why and make it come up. Here is where the troubleshooting comes in.
When troubleshooting we tend to try the easiest fix first and then go from there. The first thing we would do is flip the fiber ends. Each piece of fiber has two strands of fiber terminated individually so that on each end you have to match the sending strand with the sending strand and the receiving strand with the receiving strand. The easiest way to do this is to flip the two strands of fiber at the switch you are working on. If that doesn’t fix it then we would go into the programming of the switch and tell it to shutdown the fiber port and then tell it to startup the fiber port again. This clears any errors that might be causing the port to not function properly. Next, we would check to make sure the configuration for the fiber port we are working on is correct. At this point, if it’s still not working then it’s usually a hardware issue. If it is a hardware issue, we have to start replacing equipment. We would start with replacing the fiber, then a G-Bic , a switch and so on.
After the switches were up and running, we were ready to get the wireless working. Before we installed the switches, I had been hanging access points in my spare time so we didn’t have to worry about hanging them. Hanging an AP didn’t take much. There is a clip on the back of AP that pulls apart to attach to the drop ceiling. The wire or power had already been run to the AP’s so I just plugged them in.
Now, we move on to the fun part, configuring the server to manage all the AP’s. The setup seemed simple but it quickly became a nightmare. The main server that was running all the wireless for campus would not connect to the server in the building we were working in. At first, we thought it was the network but after some checking we found that it was working properly. It ended up being a setting that shouldn’t have been enabled on the slave server because the main server already had it enabled.
Once we got the network install done for LMU, I started working with a security install for Oakwood. The first thing we had to do was figure up the amount of storage that was going to be needed. This told us how much holding capacity each DVR needed to have and how much storage we would need at a central server to back that data up. Because of the nature of their security needs, the video stored on the DVR’s would have to be sent across the network at night to a central server.
Once we figured out which DVR’s and cameras, they had to be installed. The install process was pretty straight forward. Each camera would be mounted to the wall at a specified location. Then a power and video cable would be attached to them. The power and video cable would run down to the basement where the DVR was. We would attach the video cable to the DVR and attach the power to a transformer. Later, the DVR recording would be setup by another tech according to the plan we had outlined earlier.
Now that I have highlighted some of my experiences at CIS, I want to take the time to define and explain the major concepts I learned while working on those projects. Those concepts are: switch to port, router to switch, firewall to router, DNS, redundancy, wireless mesh, and DVR capture & storage.
The concept which I have dubbed as the “Switch to Port,” was the first and probably hardest for me to understand. The idea is there is a Network Switch mounted in a rack with another piece of equipment called a patch panel. Attached to the patch panel is a network wire that runs to a specific port in a room. These ports are all labeled on both the patch panel and at the port itself. Each port is then patched through with an Ethernet cord to the switch which is then patched to the router or another switch with fiber optic cable.
The second concept I learned, I call router to switch. What is going on here is that information is coming into the router, and the router will take that information and send it to the correct location. As it does this, it erases the Hop count on that piece of information. The hop count is the number of switches or hubs between the router and the destination of the information. If the hop count gets too high the information starts to degrade and it will be dropped. Although a hub is considered a dumb device because it repeats broadcast information it still gets counted toward the hop count.
The third concept, firewall to router, is fairly straight forward. The firewall is a device that sits between the internal and external networks. It takes traffic and decides whether it’s allowed in the network or whether it’s denied access into the network.
Another concept and part of the network is the DNS or Domain Name System. This system translates meaningful names like www.google.com into numerical values such as 192.68.1.1. This typically hosted on a dedicated server and every domain has to have one. Each DNS Server references a DNS server that is higher in network structure than itself.
Redundancy, the fourth concept, is having backup equipment in place so that there is minimal down time. Redundancy is highly important in a production situation because having downtime costs money. This is why business setup networks with multiple data paths, backup power supplies and battery backups for all equipment.
A wireless mesh is a network of wireless nodes that connect to one another wirelessly. The idea is that we can place multiple nodes in an area so that no physical network cable needs to be there to run each individual wireless node. When one wireless node breaks off the mesh, the mesh still functions until that node is brought back online.
The last concept is Digital Video Recorder. DVR’s are essential for a business’ security and in that setting rely heavily on the network to backup its data at a central server. A DVR is a device that can capture and store video. When determining what kind of DVR is needed, the primary question to ask is; what is the amount of video that needs to be readily available? Other questions to ask would be how long does that video need to be stored? This will tell you how much storage you need at the central server, which is all attached to the network.
This internship was beneficial for a number of reasons. First of all, the experience of being in the working world is a real eye opener. Being prompt, alert and ready to apply the skills that are being taught is something that is learned in the classroom, but still somewhat optional. In the workforce, those skills are essential. It is tiring and demanding so you really have to love what you do to enjoy it.
Being in a working environment yields experience that no class can provide; it is valuable and essential to any learning equation. When out on a job I was forced to not only absorb what was going on around me, but to be able to process that information and apply it in later situations.
While I learned a lot in this internship there is still plenty left to learn. I would like to get a certification in networking and servers. For this I would have to know a sufficient amount about how to setup, configure and troubleshoot an entire network from scratch. I would also have to know how to properly configure Microsoft servers, the features they offer and how to troubleshoot any problems that may arise.
In conclusion, I just want to say that I really enjoyed this internship. There were so many opportunities to learn in so many different areas of the information technology world. It was just an amazing experience all around.
Sources
Goto, Shigeki; Fujii, Keita. “Correlation between Hop Count and Packet Transfer Time.” University of California, Irvine. 2000. Waseda University. 9 Dec 2008 <http://netresearch.ics.uci.edu/kfujii/iws2000.pdf>.
Piquepaille, Roland . “Wireless Mesh Networks.“ Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends.
11 Jan 2004. 9 Dec 2008 <http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2003/03 /01.html>.
“What is DNS.” Microsoft TechNet. 28 mar 2003. Microsoft Corporation. 9 Dec 2008 <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc787921.aspx>.
