HAL9k; now with awesome electrical and network installation

The local hacker space here in Aalborg (HAL9k) has moved from Rapsgade 1 to a permanent location at Sofiendalsvej 80. For a number of weeks we he been moving boxes of all our stuff, painting walls and other tasks related to the move. One of the things that I was involved in was the electricity installation and the computer network.

We have been so lucky to inherit a large number of metal and plastic cable trays including a number of Ethernet jacks and power outlets reducing the budget for establishing a new infrastructure at the new place.

After a lot of work, 50 m metal, 20 m plastic cable tray and 1,2 km Ethernet cable later we now have 74 ethernet jacks connected to our distribution frame with our two 48 port gigabit Dell switches connected to an OpenBSD firewall in VMware on our Dell R710 server, routing IPv4 and IPv6 (through a SIXXS tunnel). Thank you to Xena for the switches and the server.

The wireless network is handled by a 802.11a/b/g access point. The access point and the directional antennas are actually meant for outdoor usage, so we mounted it on an IKEA table leg to give it a touch of the rustic outdoor life on a large pole…
If you are curious about the details of the network setup check out the hal9k wiki here.

Besides the network installation we have also installed a new distribution board and a lot of power outlets. We have a dedicated power meter for the server room besides the three other power meters (which according to our plan will be monitored by our LIAB) and relays for the groups used in the workshops making integration with the physical access control system and emergency buttons easily done.