good cabling in real environments

Wed Dec 17 17:37:51 UTC 2003

> > How do you do good cabling in dynamic, real environments? :-)

I find that no matter what you do, if there's more than one person touching
the cabling, then it ends up a mess, unless you're very strict about cabling
policy. Everyone has their pet way of running cat5 in a rack, and each one
individually looks nice, but you try to mix them and it looks a mess.

My pet hate is people who cable tie each cable run they do, especially on 
overhead ladders. Every now and again, I end up going around with a pair of
wirecutters cutting out all the cableties. It's amazing how many you end up
with, even after 3-6 months in a fairly static environment (I wouldn't say
we're running cables more than once every week or two).

And worse than people who over-use cable ties, are the people who use cableties
and then roughly cut the end off at an angle. I've had more cuts from those 
sharp ends, than anything else in a data centre. When I do it, I cut them all
flush, which makes them much more skin friendly.

Simon
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