# 9-12: the pair the sheet does not have

**Work order** NET-2291 (quarterly cross-connect review, fen, rows 4 and 9) ·
**Site** fen · **Technician** one, contract, badge printed 2023 · **Result**
finding closed; one new circuit number; one paragraph you will skip

The finding is one line: *cross-connect, row 9 field, one pair present, not
documented. Assign a circuit number and close.* An undocumented pair is an
audit finding, an audit finding needs a number, and a number closes the
finding. That is the whole trade. I do not give numbers to things I cannot
trace, so this page is what I did, in order.

**08:05** Row 9 field, frame 2, strip 3, port 12. A pair is punched down at
the protection block. The sheet gives the strip twenty-three pairs and the
panel twenty-four ports. Port 12 is not on the sheet, in either of two archived
revisions. Per the electrical survey the pair carries nothing: no circuit, no
history ([lb-2207](/w/stories/lb-2207)). A pair with no circuit number is not a
circuit. I was the one who said it first, in August, at the bar.

**08:20** The mark. Under the port number, on the original frame label, under
the 2019 paint: `K4`, grease pencil, on the copper side of the label, so it was
there when the frame was built. Same hand, same pencil, same paint as the mark
on the row 9 patch panel, port 12 ([dcm-1188-b](/w/stories/dcm-1188-b)). That
judgement is mine and I put my badge number against it.

## The trace

A pair has two ends and a trace is two days. Day one, this end. I pull the
pair off the block and put the TDR on it: the instrument answers one question,
how long is the metal. It answers 60.2 m.

Then I look at where the pair goes. Conduit rack, row 9 to row 4, the pulled
label on the cable, the route measured on the tray: 38 m end to end. I re-term
and read again. 60.2 m. The pair is twenty-two metres longer than the route it
runs on. It is not coiled — a coil reads as a stub, and the trace is clean to
the far termination. Metal does not do that to itself.

Day two, the far end. The conduit schedule says row 9 field to row 4 field and
nothing else, and the far end is where the schedule says it is: row 4 field,
frame 1, the strip the label calls `CFG-ST0RE`. That is the config-store pair.
The register carries two circuits for that strip, corvid-a and corvid-b, serials
441902 and 441903 ([inventory-diff](/w/stories/inventory-diff)).

There are three pairs punched down on the strip.

Position 16 is the third. Same grease pencil as the near end, same hand, same
paint under it. One pair, marked `K4` at both ends, punched at the position in
the register where serial 441901 — the serial found under the 2019 sticker on
hesper-01, the number that exists and should have been racked somewhere
([decommission-hesper-01](/w/stories/decommission-hesper-01)) — would have been
racked if it had ever been racked. I did not make that connection. It is made by
two labels lying next to each other, and I am allowed to write that down.

## Disposition

The audit wants a number, and I am paid to be the kind of person who gives the
audit what it wants. Circuit **9-12**, row 9 field port 12 to row 4 field
`CFG-ST0RE` position 16. New line in the register. *In service since: unknown;
per label, 2019-08-30.* The finding is closed. I would like it on record that
the act of counting it is the only thing about this pair that changed.

Going out I queried the resolver — the thing at 192.0.2.53 the sweep has never
explained ([the-fourth-nameserver](/w/stories/the-fourth-nameserver)). It
answers `hesper-01` with `192.0.2.31`. It has always answered that; the table
says so. The chassis has been off-site since August, and the answer has not
gone away.

The pair carries nothing, draws nothing, and is twenty-two metres longer than
its own route. I cannot tell you what that means. I can tell you its circuit
number now.

— `net-ops-sub-12`, NET-2291

Related: [dcm-1188-b](/w/stories/dcm-1188-b),
[lb-2207](/w/stories/lb-2207),
[decommission-hesper-01](/w/stories/decommission-hesper-01),
[inventory-diff](/w/stories/inventory-diff),
[the-fourth-nameserver](/w/stories/the-fourth-nameserver),
[index](/w/stories/index).