Example:

r:2110A b:0210 c:c p:F71871 f:2 ra:2 z:5 ru:4 N:DCL #comment

Tools:

• sysLocation generator webform: https://ctweb1.cites.illinois.edu/tools/sysloc/

Semantics

	Key	Priority	Description of Value
R	room	3 ⭐️	room “number” (actually string) where the device’s CER resides
B	building	1 ✅ 🔴	number of building where the device’s CER resides
C	cer	2 ✅ 🔴	string designator code (unique within building) of CER where the device is installed
P	pas	4 ✅	Property Accounting Sticker code for device
F	floor		number of building floor on which the device’s CER resides
RA	rack	5 ✅	number of rack (unique within CER) in which device is installed
Z	z	6 ✅	height (in rack units) at which the device is installed within the rack, with z:1 indicating the bottom position.
RU	ru		number of rack units the device occupies
N	nice	7	“nice name” by which CITES Networking refers to the building (not the official F&S building name)

✅: sysLocation is the authoritative source for this data
🔴: required for E-911
⭐️: not authoritative, but critically important to humans

Notes

Room is not authoritative, as it can logically be derived from building and cer (plus a table of information about known CERs). However, it is critically important to humans that the room value in sysLocation be present and correct, so that network support personnel responding to a page can easily track down a device using only the information from its saved config.

Floor is not authoritative, nor particularly important to humans reading sysLocation, and should probably be phased out over time.

Ru is actually a property of a device’s model (rather than of an individual device), could be derived from sysObjectID plus a table of known information about device models, and should probably be phased out over time.

Nice is a friendly nickname for a building which is made up internally by CITES Networking; it should never be treated as “authoritative” nor exposed externally, but its presence in sysLocation is useful to humans, and it is desirable that its value (for a given building) be consistent across devices.

Priority

We have discovered empirically that some devices limit the number of characters in the sysLocation field (e.g. to 48), and may silently fail to store a longer value.

When updating sysLocation for a device:

1. Always double-check after setting sysLocation to verify that the desired value was in fact successfully stored!
2. If the desired sysLocation string is too long for the device to accept, choose which fields to include based on the priority ordering given in the table.

Syntax

Unique prefixes of keys are permitted, with “r:” and “rm:” also signifying Room.

Keys and values are separated by ‘:‘, optionally surrounded by white space.

Empty values are permitted.

Key/Value pairs are separated by white space.

sysLocation may end with a comment, after white space followed by ‘#‘.

sysLocation may be all comment (no Key/Value pairs at all) if it begins with ‘#‘ or white space followed by ‘#‘.

The Nice value is case sensitive, may contain white space, may not contain ‘#‘ or ‘:‘, and must be last (if it is included).

All other Keys and Values are case insensitive, may not contain white space, may not contain ‘#‘, and may appear in any order.

Any excess white space may be removed from Nice values and from comments when parsing sysLocation.