Abstract: A system for managing a structured cabling system, together with the attached equipment and devices, utilises a hand-held scanner to record moves, adds and changes by scanning machine-readable identifiers (such as bar-code labels) attached to structured cabling components, including but not limited to active and passive communications equipment, cross-connects, patch cords, backbone connections and peripheral equipment. The system records or audits cross-connects by scanning the label of each port and cable in a cross-connect and correlating the cable identifiers to infer the connections. Complete end-to-end connections (‘channels’) can be inferred in the same way, and the system provides a mechanism to filter the display of channels to provide the most relevant details, including display of only frequently changed components, incomplete channels and permanent patches (‘patch by exception’).

Abstract: A system for managing a structured cabling system, together with the attached equipment and devices, utilises a hand-held scanner to record moves, adds and changes by scanning machine-readable identifiers (such as bar-code labels) attached to structured cabling components, including but not limited to active and passive communications equipment, cross-connects, patch cords, backbone connections and peripheral equipment. The system records or audits cross-connects by scanning the label of each port and cable in a cross-connect and correlating the cable identifiers to infer the connections. Complete end-to-end connections (‘channels’) can be inferred in the same way, and the system provides a mechanism to filter the display of channels to provide the most relevant details, including display of only frequently changed components, incomplete channels and permanent patches (‘patch by exception’).