Comments on: the way the Internet works

By: Wesley

Wesley — Mon, 25 Aug 2003 18:04:15 +0000

I prefer nanites myself. Place some nanites and a bit of silicon at the entrance to the conduit, and in no time, they will form themselves into a fiber for you! Almost as good as using sea sponges, but much quicker. No lubrication needed. I don't have to use women's products that are still hard for me to discuss in front of the Captain.

Sure, reprogramming the things when they go askew is a bitch, but I usually find that changing the polarity on the bertold projector does the trick nicely, all by act iv!

By: Vince

Vince — Sun, 24 Aug 2003 01:58:42 +0000

A similar method involves vacuuming a piece of wire pulling cord -the stuff that packages are wrapped with, usually blue or pink in colour and feels waxy- and then tying your cable onto it. You can pull cable several hundreds of metres this way.

By: Charles Franks

Charles Franks — Sat, 23 Aug 2003 19:38:06 +0000

Fishtape is fine for reasonably short runs but this vacuum cleaner trick is an old standby for doing really tricky runs fast. I generally use a sandwich bag or something similar on the end of the line... something with high-drag and low weight. Word of caution: the rope or string can be going into the pipe _fast_ and you might get some nice burns on your hands if you are not careful when feeding it into the pipe. You can also shoot the line if you have compressed air but no vacuum. A tampon works great as a leader for blowing string through small diameter pipes.

By: Joe Dorn

Joe Dorn — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 12:08:24 +0000

One other handy thing to know about in these situations is wire pulling lubricant. It is super slippery goo that you spread all over the wires as they enter the conduit. It works real good in sticky situations!

By: jayo

jayo — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 11:05:12 +0000

The last time I helped in a big pull it was 1500' of fiber from our shop to our office at work, we already had a heavy string line blown through the conduit, then we attached a small bobcat skidsteer and used that to pull while 2 other guys pushed. It was a pain but it went through.

I usually just use an electricians snake for short runs, it will go though just about any bends 90's, 45's it doesn't matter, the one I have is 75' long (used to be 100' but mangled it too many times and had to cut the end off).

Also with the ball of foam idea if your vaccum doesn't have enough suction you can use a air compressor to push the ball through. Average air compressor is 120psi, that is a lot of push, that same pressure fires spuds from my pnematic potato gun about 300yds. @ 600 f/s.

By: lessig

lessig — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 11:04:36 +0000

true enough, adamsj. corrected.

By: bloopy

bloopy — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 05:50:13 +0000

i saw something like that on one of those "this old house" type home-improvement shows several years ago. . . instead of foam they used a partially-inflated balloon which, to me, seems like it might work out better. . .

By: mike

mike — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 00:32:19 +0000

I've found that ball chain, the kind used for pulls on ceiling fans and ceramic light sockets, works great for fishing through conduit. Just start at the top, and its own weight pulls it through. You may have to invest in a large spool of it, but it's reusable. Also works for irregular plenum and wall cavities - provided there is a way through and enough gravity, the ball chain snake will find it!

By: Tim Pozar

Tim Pozar — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 00:28:52 +0000

re: SFLAN…

SFLAN is one of two networks deploying wireless through SF. You can check out SFLAN at http://www.sflan.com. SFLAN was started some years ago (~’98) when Brewster heard of Bill Joy’s network in Aspen and thought it would be cool for the SF Presidio. It had about 5 access points and ran for a number of years at this level until recently when it was restarted to deploy APs throughout SF.

SFLAN is getting some help from the network I started call the Bay Area Research Wireless Network (http://www.barwn.org) where we developed the hardware that SFLAN uses and SFLAN uses some of our nodes to get bandwidth to them.

Tim Pozar

By: Scott Leverenz

Scott Leverenz — Thu, 21 Aug 2003 21:22:44 +0000

My night, I'm a meek and mild computer geek, by day, a heating and cooling contractor. In our business we need to run thermostat wire through many mazes as you describe. Most of the time, with out benefit of a conduit. We use a tool called a "fish tape" for fishing wire through small holes we've drilled to get the stat wire to where we want the thermostat to be. Some of the techs have 50' tapes, some 100; foot tapes. Search google for 'fish tape' and you'll find them.

I must say I admire the creative way you came up to solve the challenge at hand. Now if I could only get my techs to think "out of the box". Congratulations!