Changing Line Card of Cisco 6500 Switch

[Samarth Singh]

Hi,

Suppose one Line card of Cisco 6500 become faulty and call is loged to replace it. This faulty Line card is 48 port RJ-45 and all 48 ports are connected to LAN wires. When we change this faulty line card with New Line card how can we manage (In best way) Lan Wires so that every Lan wire is to be put back to same port of new Line card quickly and easily. Please give your suggestions and recommendations.

[Mark Malone]

they should be labelled each cable but if not and you have another spare 48 port device plug out the cables from each port hold switch in front of 6500 put them into the switch remove the faulty blade put in the new one and transfer cables from switch into new blade , thats the way i done it before took around 20 minutes as there wasnt enough slack to move them directly to new blade as faulty blade was being removed , just an option anyway it worked for me

[devils_advocate]

You need to label each one somehow.

Its up to you how to do this.

You can use proper cable labels but they can be a pain to remove sometimes.

Another option is to use a marker pen (like a sharpie) and write the port number on the boot of each cable, e.g. You unpug the cable in Gi0/5 and write the number '5' on the cable boot with a sharpie.

The best way is to use proper cable labels but if you repatch ports often, you may find yourself having to keep removing labels.

[Madhukrishnan Gopinathan Nair]

I just used a pen to mark 1, 2 , 3 etc on the cable, its just a 10 mins task.

[Iulian Vaideanu]

If _all_ the ports are populated (no "gaps"), then it's easy, one row at a time (the "upper" 24-port row and the "lower" one).

Take one piece of thin wire (one of the 8 wires from an UTP cable would do just fine), wrap it (at its middle) around the first UTP cable in the row, then cross the ends of the wire, then wrap it around the second cable, then cross the ends again, and so on - this "weaving" retains the order of the UTP cables after you unplug them all from the line card.

"Weave" the second row the same way, then unplug all the cables, replace the line card and plug the cables back in row by row, following the thin wire.

[Samarth Singh]

Innovative Idea...!!