A Tidy, Maintainable Cabinet Wiring Methodology?

mawhin asks: "I've seen a couple of articles highlighting readers' favourite tidy/untidy cabling, and conversations along the lines of 'I always do my cabling *real* tidy' / 'yeah but how can you change stuff when everything is zip tied down'. 'Use velcro not zip ties' is obviously a good tip, but what I'd really like to know is how you all do it. My particular situation involves multiple racks of switches next to racks of patch panels. What methodology would you recommend for installation and ongoing change to ensure that stuff is tidy enough to be able to trace cable; isn't so tight the you can't re-patch without stripping big chunks of cabling out; and the arrangement doesn't inevitably deteriorate?"

chrome....

[Anonymous Coward]

...spark plug wire spreaders from the hot rod ricer store. Well you asked! I'm an old gear head, that's what I would use! They look sharp!

There are ways to keep wiring racks tidy

[Anonymous Coward]

There are ways to keep wiring racks tidy but few do it.

Some hints:

• Leave some space, it might be a nice feat of engineering to pack 2" diameter cable bundle in a 2" space but thats too tight. Want the next cable run to be in there neat then leave some space, at least 3 times what is going in up front.
• If you might expand, leave even more space.
• Smaller bundles logically grouped. Putting everything in one big bundle makes it harder to work with. There is picture tidy and practical tidy, you want the later.
• Pre-wire and provision all you can right up front to reduce add ons and mess grow. EVEN if it means potentially dead cable. Costs more in the short term but less that the long term. This eliminates the costs and needs to rip open the bundles every month for 10 years.
• Before hiring someone, see their work. Ya, the other guy is cheaper but doesn't put the cables in tidy...
• Specify in contracts (internal or external) that tidy inspections, not just functional specifications as need to be met before the job is considered done.
• Realise the proportion of tidyness in the rack is proportionate to the quality planning. In fact, to know how organized a place is, ask to see their rackspace.
• Add and use hooks along side the raceways just for new cable. When the hook gets full, bundle it off to the side. This is so your not forever rebundling cable.
• Consider a distributed model where all the cable is decentralized in smaller chunks with high speed uplinks. "One Big Mother" switch is often one big mother mess no one wants to touch.
• Get management support for policies on above. You may need to rectify an admin who just throws a cable over in a disorganized way, make them follow up and do it right.

Re:some day

[toastyman]

Do you mean like these [cableorganizer.com]?

Re:Tracing cables...

[acidrain69]

Or if you are in a situation where there are already un-labelled cables, use one of these [trianglecables.com]. It's a tone generator and probe. Plug the generator in at your drop, and use the probe to find that cable on your panel. We have one of these that we paid $180 for, but the one on the link is cheaper. We also got a cable tester that also generates tones, so you can put the generator/tester at the drop, go to the panel, locate the cable with the probe, then plug in a receiver from the tester kit and it will tell you the status of the cable. It's just a tester, not a cable certifier. Those are crazy-expensive, and not necessary for my work.

(no affiliation with triangle cables, just the first link I googled)

Not anymore...

[Anonymous Coward]

Found this a while back:
From a Network Wiring Mess to Wiring Nirvana
http://techrepublic.com.com/2300-10879_11-5896894- 1.html [com.com]