SunDigital

07/20/2021

A little before and after progress on a job currently being done in Belhaven NC.
The client is remodeling an old Wells Fargo, originally a Wachovia into an admin building for their business. When the bank vacated the building most all the network infrastructure was just cut from the back of the rack and what was left was terminated on REALLY old patch panels like I’ve never seen before. Unfortunately, they didn’t leave much slack to work with, so we had to terminate all the existing cable infrastructure and new CAT6 pulls for cameras and extra data ports on new keystone patch panels - then patch those up into a new cabinet.
This building is one of the only ones in Belhaven above the flood level, and come to find out after I started this job, my uncle was actually the foreman with Barnhill that built the building back in ‘84. I got the full rundown of how they intentionally built the entire lot up so it wouldn’t flood. Even above the flood level though, we mounted the cabinet up high enough that it should never see water.
Some pretty awesome networking and AV equipment in this build. UniFi UDM Pro, two 48 port UniFi PoE Pro switches, and UniFi In-Wall HD’s for WiFi throughout. The UNVR and G4 cameras are an awesome addition as well with some Flex’s coming if they ever come back in stock. Thanks to for helping hang those! All of that hooked up to a lithium APC backup, which was unbelievably light for the size. The switched PDU makes remote support a lot easier if something gets hung up and needs to be poked in the eye. Last but not least for the conference area the Crestron AirMedia2 on a 75” TCL couldn’t be a better fit for wireless screen casting and presentations.
This was my first rack design with micro patch cables instead of wire management panels and longer patch cables. I’ve been using these MonoPrice slim CAT6 patches for a while now and not had any issues with them, and it looks so clean!
More updates to come as the building is finished and fiber is installed.

04/13/2021

These scissors are probably my favorite new tool for terminating cables. Super clean cuts, and the shear cut section makes cutting lengths of shielded, underground CAT6a like slicing through butter. Minimal effort compared to my last pair of data snips. And ‘s RJ45 connectors and CAT6 cable have made creating high quality custom length patch cables a breeze, and I have to say the neon green load bar is probably my favorite part. It means a lot to those of us that not only take pride in how our networks function but also how they look. Nothing I hate worse than a messy, piecemeal wiring closet full of random crappy cables.

**not a sponsorship, I just really like their products.

04/13/2021

When you got wireless links to build, but you also want to watch a movie.

03/02/2021

8 cores of processing goodness.

03/01/2021

Can’t wait to get this system booted up. vMix is optimized for Nvidia graphics, particularly with the GTX 1660. Definitely looking forward to faster hardware encoding.
The current build has an 8TB raid array in it that we’ve used for intermediate storage. We write to that array during live recordings. But over the past few years that drive has started to fill up. We always had a plan for on site cool storage (online smaller res storage because I’m a firm believer in multiple redundancies) but hadn’t need it yet. This new Synology RackStation RS819 will have a total of 18TB of usable space for cool storage archiving. My favorite thing about this affordable NAS is that it has dual NICs that you can bond together for higher throughput - so we can move data to it as fast as the disks will write without any bottleneck.
From there we’ll cold archive the footage to Blu-ray archival disk as we get time to store in the church library.

02/28/2021

vMix and ProPresenter computers at Memorial bout to get some some long overdue upgrades.

02/16/2021

A tiny little network install in Fairfield NC yesterday for a small physical therapy clinic. IPsec V2 VPN between this site and the other clinics for shared resources like VoIP at the main office, over a omnidirectional antenna running the RUT X11 modem with AT&T service. Honestly could not believe we were getting 30-40mbps with a 31ms latency in a complete dead zone like Fairfield. None of the other cell services had anything in the area, no DSL, and satellite wasn’t an option because of latency. Overall a great install and a happy client.

11/17/2020

“Chancho, sometimes a man, he likes the cables to be neat, in the network rack, it’s for fun.” - Nacho Libre (probably)
Cleaned up this network rack for a client this week. Not much care was put into cable management when this stuff was put in, and it had kind of gotten out of control over the years of changes. Made custom length CAT6 patch cables to work with the space that was given and custom length cables to connect up the Draytek router and Centurylink failover that was in place.

09/02/2020

2000ish ft point to multipoint out in Gold Point. Using the Lite AP 120 sector for distribution and LiteBeam AC gen 2’s for CPE. Second LiteBeam is on the far side of the red barn and the Lite AP is just barely visible on the side of the church in the distance.
Sharing the uplink connection from an external SimNet Wireless antenna running on T-Mobile.
Delivering a solid 30/8mbps to the home with no more latency than the distribution site has.

08/24/2020

One of our favorite installs to date. sunDigital was brought in to assist a friend’s client with simplifying and upgrading their network infrastructure.
Previously the client had several ISP provided routers, multiple subjects because of this, and some of the buildings had no connectivity at all.
We designed a network that would use the In-Wall AP’s internally to provide stable, high bandwidth, roam capable wireless for live-streaming sales.
We connected two of the buildings with Mesh Pro’s (which also provided wireless and an uplink for a Flex Mini), two of the buildings with Nanostations, and added Mesh antennas in two of the metal buildings for wireless. The 8 Port 150w switch is powering two Flex Switches with the Nanostations and Mesh antennas. Used TrueCable CAT6 shielded for all these PoE devices, super good quality cable for the price. Check out the blog for a more detailed post!
@ Howell's Mercantile

08/24/2020

One of our clients recently purchased a new office building and moved locations. We were brought back to move the network equipment and add a couple AC Lite ap’s to cover the new building.
This was a fairly bare bones install with no room for even a patch panel, but the money for this project went to the important parts.
The EdgeRouter X and EdgeSwitch 8XP were perfect for a low cost managed network and the Lite ap’s provided more than adequate WiFi for all the office employees.
The most important piece to this install in my opinion though, is the DS218. Shifting all scans and important documents to the mirrored network storage on the DS218 centralized document storage and gave the customer a level of security and document retention they desperately needed for both operating ease and peace of mind.
This whole setup cost less than $1000. Money WELL spent when you have peace of mind that you’re not going to lose your documents at work.

08/24/2020

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