What Cable Labeling Scheme Do You Use?

Are you looking for something more helpful than what BICSI suggests?

See that scheme here: BICSI For IP Video Surveillance Guide

We do mostly surveillance and we keep it simple. Since we put in our own network, we just put the last octave of the IP address on the label. Since we have a standardized address scheme, we know at any site what each label means. Cameras start at 101, nvr at 31, wireless at 51.

Occasionally we do drops for offices and we use the V1,D1 scheme as well.

These are smaller environments, not enterprise

For small jobs, I like writing short but descriptive labels- WEST CAM RIGHT, OFFICE CAM, BSMT CAM, and so forth.

For large jobs, I have a numbering scheme for type, device, and zone. I also like to go in a specific order, so if I walk into a job years later, I just start counting devices and I know what number device it should be. I got the technique from this book about waiters and it works very well.

Make sure you write down anything you're likely to forget in the years to come, and keep the documentation on paper in an easily accessible place in the wiring cabinet or whatever. But the important thing is, be consistent. You should be able to get oriented in a few minutes and get right to troubleshooting. Nothing sucks worse than outsmarting yourself and not being able to figure out something that seemed so clever five years before.

Ari- your statement regarding write down what you might need years from now could be no more true. I have found that doing that one thing saves oodles of time troubleshooting and really helps the other guy that will come behind you. You are never the last one.....

It all depends on the size and scope of the project. A small retail store install only requires minimal labels for cameras (CAM-01). However, we have had larger projects where we pulled so many different types of CAT5e connections, that we had to be much more specific. We usually label for both ends of the run in a two line setup:

PP1-P1

CAM-101

PP1 stands for patch panel 1, and P1 stands for port 1. In CAM-101, the hundreds place stands for which floor the camera is on, the tens and ones places are for the corresponding camera number, so floor 1 camera 01.

We also pull wire for HDMI/HD Base-T, access points, POS terminals, printers, control systems (IP based AV controls), and many more. Usually, they all terminate in the same rack, so keeping things organized is a must.

project specifications will dictate labeling scheme... some projects will defer to the IT staff and they will tell you how they want stations locations labeled... in many other cases specs will cite bicsi for labeling schemes... for smaller projects with no specs we will label in a similar style to bicsi for consistency sake...