Hah -- well put. How dare you say more with less words than I...? :>

~JMB

As others have pointed out, if a 'Professional' makes the cable, it is a 'Professionally Made Cable' -- tautologically speaking, no way around that -- so it really comes down to the question of whether it is done *in* or *out* of house.

Also correct is that in-house cable runs *are* done custom, per the needs & requirements of the organization(s) involved. Ideally, they're done by those who have enough of a clue to NOT take the closet-loop and leave it in the ceiling, in a tightly-wound coil atop a fluorescent light fixture (I wish I were making *that* up), and with the requisite intelligence and attention to detail necessary for proper terminating (e.g., lead-length, TPI and proper spacing being increasingly critical as frequencies rise, with malperformance far easier to attain with CAT6 versus CAT5, as higher-frequencies and tighter standards dictate increasingly smaller tolerances...But I digress...).

FWIW, I personally *have* made countless numbers of various Category cables (just counting Telco/TIA/USOC-stuff, CAT3/4/5/5e/6), and subjected them to tests with professional equipment ranging from cheapie (non-Fluke) testers all the way up to the uber-pricey gear which includes TDR testing & all that.

Have I hand-terminated cables which failed? Yes -- but not many -- with the majority of those I've made being well within the meets/exceeds range for NEXT/FEXT/etcetera as dictated by The Powers That Be, and none have been a source of network headaches, whether patches or runs.

Contrariwise: Have I seen patch-cables and cable-runs done in such truly horrific fashions they defy description? Absolutely.

The difference is usually that those people who either made cables or did runs with toxic levels of FAIL were, on *average*, the same people one couldn't trust to relocate a phone outlet (someone once actually cut the wire w/o unplugging it from the PBX first, and with a tool which actually had the lettering "NOT FOR USE ON LIVE CIRCUITS" on the handle, no less -- no, I'm not making that up): id est, idiots who've gone *full retard*.

This is actually about the most sound argument for having someone possessing the know-how/wits/intellect (or, failing those, I *suppose* the appropriate certifications...) to do the job -- whether making a patch cable or pulling for a run, those done by no-loads OR done by those w/the smarts but lacking the knowledge are equally prone to be hose-jobs: termination (or a cable run) done by someone w/o some knowledge and experience is prone to be hosed...Even if the person can write all their C/C++ in iambic pentameter and script their way into a locked car for kicks, but who just didn't know to take the proper factors into consideration (tensile strength, cornering, innate properties of metal wiring, to say nothing of EMI issues/distances etcetera), winding up with networking issues is often the result. Something about HW engineers applying SW patches being as dangerous as idea-filled users comes to mind...

In an 'ideal' world, those actually doing the physical implementation of cabling would be as knowledgeable as the architect of the infrastructure itself was... ...Which is something one seldom sees, as few CTO-types are to be found navigating dusty ceilings & insulation-laden crawlspaces. Funny, that.

As for some of the best advice, Sjames's post is sound, and I agree completely: I've never had a problem with anyone's handmade cable which couldn't be solved by a snip & retermination, provided the patch cable stock itself met the minimum requirements for the given category...So providing a few extra inches is a good idea, and far better than (say) an extra 30' or the like.

~JMB