So I have a situation where I am trying to get LTE to an out of band router and there is no signal available in the data center. There was a booster setup purchased and I have a manager telling me that standards, industry and not local, prohibit the installation. He has yet to produce any documented industry standard so I thought I would reach out to see if anyone here has heard of this. We fall under NIST controls and I haven't found anything there and have also looked at TIA and not found anything. Thanks... On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 9:09 AM Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net> wrote:

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 8:01 AM Robert Webb <rwfireguru@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Anyone out there deal with data center design?

Looking for any info available which provides guidelines on putting antennas, like LTE booster, in the data center.

Not quite sure what you're looking for here Robert. As far as placing something like an LTE booster in a data center, you'd just use common sense (place it in the best possible place from a connectivity standpoint). Is this something you're considering in order to provide service to folks who run LTE backup connections on their gear (like serial concentrators)? Wireless/RF site surveys and how to do them effectively are pretty well-documented at this point.

Or are you asking about roof access/deploying antennas on a rooftop safely/securely?

Thanks for the info on the standards portion. The booster configuration has been setup in a test scenario where the external antenna has been placed outside with line of site to the tower, less than a tenth of a mile away, with the feed cable run down a hallway indoors, the booster connected, and the indoor antenna connected (not in the data center though). Test with LTE equipment, ie. cell phones, has brought the signal from barely a single bar of 1x to 4 bars of LTE with good speeds. Manager has no issue with equipment purchased and has polled the other tenants in the same data center and they are also OK with it. He has just cited that there is some standard but has not been forthcoming with any documentation. I figured if there was such a standard then someone here would probably have run across it at some time. I am getting the feeling this is just something he has heard or been told in the past and really doesn't know. On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 9:35 AM Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net> wrote:

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 8:30 AM Robert Webb <rwfireguru@gmail.com> wrote:

...

So I have a situation where I am trying to get LTE to an out of band router and there is no signal available in the data center. There was a booster setup purchased and I have a manager telling me that standards, industry and not local, prohibit the installation.

He has yet to produce any documented industry standard so I thought I would reach out to see if anyone here has heard of this.

We fall under NIST controls and I haven't found anything there and have also looked at TIA and not found anything.

I've never heard of any industry standard preventing such a thing. There are a few questions this raises though. The first and most obvious being, are you sure that a "booster setup" will actually help? Have you done a site survey to figure out how to actually accomplish what you need to accomplish? The other question is whether perhaps the issue he has is with the specific "booster setup" chosen. Perhaps there's something naughty about it, in particular, that has caused him to not want it in his facility (cheap Chinese radios are known, for example, for polluting the spectrum outside of the frequencies that they are designed to operate within.) Maybe he has other folks doing legit RF stuff in there and doesn't want to risk that pollution?

On 7/18/19 7:54 AM, Robert Webb wrote:

Thanks for the info on the standards portion.

The booster configuration has been setup in a test scenario where the external antenna has been placed outside with line of site to the tower, less than a tenth of a mile away, with the feed cable run down a hallway indoors, the booster connected, and the indoor antenna connected (not in the data center though).

Test with LTE equipment, ie. cell phones, has brought the signal from barely a single bar of 1x to 4 bars of LTE with good speeds.

Manager has no issue with equipment purchased and has polled the other tenants in the same data center and they are also OK with it. He has just cited that there is some standard but has not been forthcoming with any documentation.

I figured if there was such a standard then someone here would probably have run across it at some time.

Is he denying on some industry "LTE" standard or some other data center or security standard?

I am getting the feeling this is just something he has heard or been told in the past and really doesn't know.

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 9:35 AM Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net <mailto:matt@netfire.net>> wrote:

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 8:30 AM Robert Webb <rwfireguru@gmail.com <mailto:rwfireguru@gmail.com>> wrote:

So I have a situation where I am trying to get LTE to an out of band router and there is no signal available in the data center. There was a booster setup purchased and I have a manager telling me that standards, industry and not local, prohibit the installation.

He has yet to produce any documented industry standard so I thought I would reach out to see if anyone here has heard of this.

We fall under NIST controls and I haven't found anything there and have also looked at TIA and not found anything.

I've never heard of any industry standard preventing such a thing. There are a few questions this raises though. The first and most obvious being, are you sure that a "booster setup" will actually help? Have you done a site survey to figure out how to actually accomplish what you need to accomplish? The other question is whether perhaps the issue he has is with the specific "booster setup" chosen. Perhaps there's something naughty about it, in particular, that has caused him to not want it in his facility (cheap Chinese radios are known, for example, for polluting the spectrum outside of the frequencies that they are designed to operate within.) Maybe he has other folks doing legit RF stuff in there and doesn't want to risk that pollution?

It's not quite clear what you mean by "NIST controls" - NIST publishes standards & guidelines, they don't regulate. Now, if you're running a Federal data center, or one for a government contractor - perhaps you're referring to "NIST Compliance" under FISMA (the Federal Information Security Management Act) - which involves compliance with a bunch of FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards).  See https://csrc.nist.gov/topics/laws-and-regulations/laws/fisma & https://digitalguardian.com/blog/what-nist-compliance for some background. Now if I had to guess - I expect that there are some security standards that would prohibit placing an antenna inside a data center handling any kind of sensitive or classified data. If you have any systems, in the data center, that require security certification & accreditation, I expect your accreditation authority would be the person to talk to.  Or your information security officer. On 7/18/19 9:30 AM, Robert Webb wrote:

So I have a situation where I am trying to get LTE to an out of band router and there is no signal available in the data center. There was a booster setup purchased and I have a manager telling me that standards, industry and not local, prohibit the installation.

He has yet to produce any documented industry standard so I thought I would reach out to see if anyone here has heard of this.

We fall under NIST controls and I haven't found anything there and have also looked at TIA and not found anything.

Thanks...

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 9:09 AM Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net <mailto:matt@netfire.net>> wrote:

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 8:01 AM Robert Webb <rwfireguru@gmail.com <mailto:rwfireguru@gmail.com>> wrote:

Anyone out there deal with data center design?

Looking for any info available which provides guidelines on putting antennas, like LTE booster, in the data center.

Not quite sure what you're looking for here Robert. As far as placing something like an LTE booster in a data center, you'd just use common sense (place it in the best possible place from a connectivity standpoint). Is this something you're considering in order to provide service to folks who run LTE backup connections on their gear (like serial concentrators)? Wireless/RF site surveys and how to do them effectively are pretty well-documented at this point.

Or are you asking about roof access/deploying antennas on a rooftop safely/securely?

-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. Practice is when everything works but no one knows why. In our lab, theory and practice are combined: nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown

The is booster to only get an LTE signal from Verizon into the data center.. For our purpose of needing it, we have a cisco router with LTE for our system as a back management access in case of loss to the system by normal means. On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 11:39 AM Andrew Latham <lathama@gmail.com> wrote:

I agree with Miles that this is more of an infiltration and or ex-filtration of data issue. Can you firewall at the booster? Out of Band management is tricky when LTE bandwidth is so high that one could export large quantities of data.

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 9:28 AM Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:

...

It's not quite clear what you mean by "NIST controls" - NIST publishes standards & guidelines, they don't regulate.

Now, if you're running a Federal data center, or one for a government contractor - perhaps you're referring to "NIST Compliance" under FISMA (the Federal Information Security Management Act) - which involves compliance with a bunch of FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards). See https://csrc.nist.gov/topics/laws-and-regulations/laws/fisma & https://digitalguardian.com/blog/what-nist-compliance for some background.

Now if I had to guess - I expect that there are some security standards that would prohibit placing an antenna inside a data center handling any kind of sensitive or classified data.

If you have any systems, in the data center, that require security certification & accreditation, I expect your accreditation authority would be the person to talk to. Or your information security officer. On 7/18/19 9:30 AM, Robert Webb wrote:

So I have a situation where I am trying to get LTE to an out of band router and there is no signal available in the data center. There was a booster setup purchased and I have a manager telling me that standards, industry and not local, prohibit the installation.

He has yet to produce any documented industry standard so I thought I would reach out to see if anyone here has heard of this.

We fall under NIST controls and I haven't found anything there and have also looked at TIA and not found anything.

Thanks...

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 9:09 AM Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net> wrote:

...

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 8:01 AM Robert Webb <rwfireguru@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Anyone out there deal with data center design?

Looking for any info available which provides guidelines on putting antennas, like LTE booster, in the data center.

Not quite sure what you're looking for here Robert. As far as placing something like an LTE booster in a data center, you'd just use common sense (place it in the best possible place from a connectivity standpoint). Is this something you're considering in order to provide service to folks who run LTE backup connections on their gear (like serial concentrators)? Wireless/RF site surveys and how to do them effectively are pretty well-documented at this point.

Or are you asking about roof access/deploying antennas on a rooftop safely/securely?

-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. Practice is when everything works but no one knows why. In our lab, theory and practice are combined: nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown

-- - Andrew "lathama" Latham -