Structured Cabling, Network Installation and Hardware Migration

Most small-business cabling was never planned

The typical small office network is the residue of a decade of decisions. A few cables run under the floor when the business moved in, more added when two desks became six, a switch balanced on a shelf because the cabinet was full, and a fibre tail nobody wants to touch. None of it is labelled, and none of it was tested when it went in.

That works until it does not. The failures it produces are the slow kind: a desk that drops the network twice a week, a phone that crackles only in the afternoon, a camera that reboots at random. Each one gets blamed on the switch, the ISP or the laptop, and each investigation starts from nothing because there is no record of what is connected to what.

What we install, and what we test

We install copper and fibre. Cat6A and Cat7 for desks, access points, cameras and door entry; fibre where the run is long, where two buildings need linking, or where the link between cabinets needs headroom for the next ten years rather than the next two.

Every run is tested to category with a Fluke certifier, and the results are handed over as a file. That is the part most often skipped, and it is the part that matters when something goes wrong later - it turns "the cabling might be the problem" into a question that can be answered in a minute.

• ✓Cat6A and Cat7 copper to desks, access points, cameras and door entry
• ✓Fibre for building-to-building links, long runs and cabinet uplinks
• ✓Containment, trunking and floor boxes, so cable is not draped or trodden on
• ✓Cabinet build: patch panels, power, shelving, cable management and labelling
• ✓Fluke certification on every run, with results handed over as a document
• ✓A labelled schematic, so the next engineer does not start from scratch

Replacing equipment that is past end of life

A switch or firewall that has passed its end-of-support date stops receiving firmware fixes. It keeps working, which is exactly the problem - nothing visibly breaks, so nothing prompts replacement, while known vulnerabilities in it stay open indefinitely. Unpatched perimeter devices are a well-documented route into small businesses.

We replace them onto current, supported hardware - Cisco, Juniper, Aruba, Fortinet or whatever fits the site and the budget. The existing configuration is read, translated rather than retyped from memory, and the original is backed up before anything is touched, so there is a way back if the cutover surprises us.

• ✓Audit of what is installed, its support status and its current configuration
• ✓Configuration translated onto the new platform and reviewed before the cutover
• ✓A full backup of the old device kept, so a rollback is possible
• ✓VLAN and subnet design revisited during the swap rather than copied blindly
• ✓Firewall rules rebuilt to what is actually needed, not carried over wholesale
• ✓Post-migration validation, with the results written down

When the work happens

Cabling and cutovers are disruptive by nature - floor boxes come up, desks lose their network, and a switch swap means a short outage on whatever hangs off it. We plan the work around your day and do the disruptive parts in the evening or at a weekend where that suits you better.

We will not promise zero downtime, because nobody can. What we will do is tell you in advance which parts of the business will be affected and for roughly how long, agree a point at which we stop and roll back if it is not going to plan, and confirm with you that everything is working before we leave site.