How to document mast structures for telecommunications in NetBox.

[mm69mm]

Hello everyone,

I’m learning how to use NetBox and I’m using it to document my telecommunications network.

The network I manage has several sites consisting of shelters and guy‑wired masts/towers/poles for radio equipment and antennas.

Unfortunately, I’m having trouble formalizing a device type to represent the masts; I tried adapting racks, but that doesn’t seem like the most suitable solution.

Has anyone found an approach to document these kinds of structures in a rational way?

Thank you in advance.

Max.

[mrmrcoleman]

Max. It would be useful if you could share some more information about how the types of equipment that belong in these mast sites are organised so others can think along with you.

[mm69mm]

You're right; I apologize if I was vague in my question.

In practice, our sites generally consist of one or more racks located inside a shelter and a pole/pylon on which the network equipment is installed. Specifically, the racks contain switches, routers, POE switches, etc., while the pole/pylon houses all the radio equipment (antennas, routers configured as access points or bridges connected to the antennas for connecting clients or for creating radio links with other sites). The rack equipment is naturally connected to the devices on the pylon.
The situation is more or less similar to that of a mobile network telecommunications pole (I've attached an example image).

I've formulated several implementation options in Netbox, but the problem remains the pole/pylon typification, as the installed equipment has characteristics in terms of height, orientation, etc.
At the moment, not finding a suitable solution, I thought of the 'pole/pylon' object as a location and insert all the devices there.

[mrmrcoleman]

That's pretty cool. What information do you need to store about the devices on the pylon outside of normal device/cabling information? If you just need to store height and orientation you have broadly two options:

Use Custom Fields

Downside is that then every dcim.device will have a height and orientation field which could become cluttered

Use Custom Objects

• Make the tower a dcim.location within the site
• Add a new Custom Object called something liketower_mounted_equipment

Here's an example UML for what I have in mind (you can ignore the FKs on the two decimal fields, that's a bug I'm figuring out.

Here's the YAML based datamodel I have in mind:

name: tower_mounted_device
version: '1.0'
verbose_name: Tower Mounted Device
verbose_name_plural: Tower Mounted Devices
description: 'Tracks devices mounted on towers including their physical location,

  mounting position, tilt angle, and azimuth orientation.

  '
fields:
- id: 1
  name: device
  label: Device
  type: object
  related_object_type: dcim.device
  required: true
  help_text: The device mounted on the tower
  group_name: Equipment
  weight: 100
- id: 2
  name: location
  label: Tower Location
  type: object
  related_object_type: dcim.location
  required: true
  help_text: Tower or mounting location
  group_name: Equipment
  weight: 200
- id: 3
  name: tilt
  label: Tilt Angle (degrees)
  type: decimal
  required: true
  validation_minimum: -90
  validation_maximum: 90
  default: 0
  help_text: Vertical tilt angle in degrees (-90 to +90)
  group_name: Positioning
  weight: 300
- id: 4
  name: azimuth
  label: Azimuth (degrees)
  type: decimal
  required: true
  validation_minimum: 0
  validation_maximum: 360
  default: 0
  help_text: Horizontal direction in degrees (0-360, where 0=North)
  group_name: Positioning
  weight: 400
- id: 5
  name: mounting_height
  label: Mounting Height (meters)
  type: decimal
  required: false
  validation_minimum: 0
  help_text: Height above ground level in meters
  group_name: Physical Details
  weight: 500
- id: 6
  name: sector
  label: Sector/Face
  type: text
  required: false
  help_text: Sector identifier (e.g., Alpha, Bravo, North, etc.)
  group_name: Physical Details
  weight: 600
- id: 7
  name: installation_date
  label: Installation Date
  type: date
  required: false
  group_name: Lifecycle
  weight: 700
- id: 8
  name: notes
  label: Notes
  type: longtext
  required: false
  help_text: Additional mounting or positioning notes
  group_name: Additional Info
  weight: 800