
Using rope physics to simulate cabling a data center in VR - Oatseller
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/8xn9ta/using_rope_physics_to_simulate_cabling_a_data/
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smileypete
Reminds me of this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1XB0rrYes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1XB0rrYes)

The cabling looks so perfect it kinda seems a little alien even.

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0xbadf00d
That was uncomfortable watching - having been responsible for data centers in
a past life my nightmares were haunted by those with no, or worse, little
knowledge re-patching critical infrastructure.

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dsr_
This puts the focus in the wrong place.

When wiring a rack, you've got to start with an understanding of what you want
each piece to do. If you have a switch where all the ports are untagged or on
a common VLAN, the only thing which matters about cable placement in the
switch is how easy it is to trace later on. If you have multiple VLANs, you
need to have a map right there in front of you saying how the ports are
assigned.

On the physical level, dealing with intermittent connectivity issues (cable
not plugged in properly, cable damaged by mechanical stress) and difficulty
extracting cables (RJ45 lock lever too small or stuck) are relatively common
issues that won't be adequately simulated in VR anytime soon.

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CommieBobDole
My thought is this is probably an attempt to bring a physical paradigm to a
software-defined network, since it's apparently a Cisco project.

Though your comment brings to mind a couple of things that might be useful in
the world of physical networking:

1\. An AR tool that identifies the physical switches and overlays the port
VLAN assignments, trunks, etc. Bonus points if it could color-code the cables
accordingly, though I don't know how you'd track them through a knot
somewhere.

2\. A physical switch with RGB port LEDs with color-coded port assignments
would also be nice. Very nice.

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dsr_
2 would be pretty easy to do the second one in software right now: "Switch,
steady orange on all untagged ports, blinky orange on all VLAN 601."

Port LED status lights are already multipurpose:
[https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release-
independ...](https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release-
independent/junos/topics/reference/specifications/port-ex4200-network-
leds.html)

It would be nice to get the ability to control them more generally.

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jasonhansel
Perfect for my new video game, "Sysadmin Simulator 2018"

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kevin_thibedeau
Halon dash mini-game.

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walshemj
That presumably is in the BOFH DLC :-)

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angstromezanine
I really want to co-opt this to create a "physical" representation of my
VmWare or Xen environments. Could be a really interesting way to demonstrate
virtual appliances and networking haha

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lmilcin
I wish real cables behaved like that but that's not what actually happens. The
worst is their tendency to coil which happens when different layers of the
cable are twisted and exerting twisting force with regards to each other.

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amelius
Similar to cloth physics, except it's 1D.

E.g.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04nXlhdPxB4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04nXlhdPxB4)

~~~
amelius
Question: can cables be woven into a fabric, so that it _can_ simulate cloth?

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kimdotcom
When the virtual HVAC fails, do the VR cables lessen their rigidity as the
temperature heats up?

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crispyambulance
It is not clear to me what the intention is with this stuff.

I mean, in a datacenter, aren't there "top of rack" switches that everything
below gets cabled into and then you have the top-of-rack switches aggregating
traffic into fiber and the fiber going into a much larger central switch?

Where in a datacenter do you have to worry about patch-panel concerns unless
one is routing to testing tools of some kind?

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peterwwillis
I don't know the intention, but there are a lot of different use cases for
cabling. It's not always top of rack, it's not always in a data center, it's
not even always in a rack. And certainly not everyone uses fiber backbones.

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clord
Would be fun to hook this up to crossbow or another robust virtual network
stack. Virtually wire up virtual networking. Throw in a little virtual PDA to
configure and spin up new VMs (spawning them into rack on demand).

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Canada
Pretty cool, but they need to upgrade the physics, add a dust simulator and
badly sized power cables so the player can make proper rats nest

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nineteen999
I'll throw in a feature request for zinc whiskers.

[http://www.ecmweb.com/power-quality-archive/how-do-zinc-
whis...](http://www.ecmweb.com/power-quality-archive/how-do-zinc-whiskers-
affect-todays-data-centers)

