The N connectors were easier to deal with than the vampire taps. To add a node, you just "spliced" a new xceiver box onto the line where you needed it by screwing a new length of cable into the new + existng xceivers, then connecting the AUI drop cable from the box to the node.
I've to say it, the AUI cables were an absolute pain in the ass to deal with. We had also a thick coax with the vampire taps and AUI fan outs from Excellan. Dealing with the coax was not that bad since we made an inverted U and had a coax run on each of the two vertical raisers this particular building had. The biggest challenge was to go from the raiser using the existing horizontal conduits that were not that big, and run the AUI from the XCVR to the fanout unit and then from that unit to each desk. Before going to 10BaseT we used pre-standard LattisNet from SynOptics, getting rid of the AUI was a relief. Cheers Jorge