Poor cable management can result in loss of productivity and frustration. Imagine a simple task, such as patching in a new computer to a network port. This should take no more than a few minutes to complete, but if your cable room looks like spaghetti junction, it can take much, much longer.

A cable management system might sound like a luxury, but the reality is that incorrectly labelled and disorganised, untidy cables can make a five-minute job for your IT administrator take days. Organising your cables not only looks professional, it also makes maintenance and troubleshooting more effective.

Here are our top tips for cable management good practice:

Label your cables

Labelling is key to effective cable management. If you need to test a number of ports in a short period of time, labelling will be a huge help. It will take time to do, but it is time well spent. Once all of the cables are correctly labelled, it will make every job far quicker and easier to complete than wading through a mass of unmarked cables.

Choose quality cabling

A good cabling system uses quality cabling. Cheap cables use a sub-standard copper core, which results in signal loss. Cheaper cabling also has a tendency to stretch and bend, resulting in transmission failure. A higher quality cable will last longer and provide faster data transmission, resulting in a more reliable network.

Avoid overload

You should never overload cable trays. If they become too heavy, there’s a risk they’ll fall over and cause damage or injury. To avoid this happening, unused cables should be removed from trays, which also helps to help keep things organised. Overhead cable trays are expensive, but they help keep your cables tidy and prevent degradation in signal quality.

Colour code cables

Using different coloured cables can help make troubleshooting much easier. Using different colours for different network devices will help you quickly and easily tell your servers, desktops and printers apart. You can plan a colour scheme that best fits your needs, which will also make identifying different devices much easier.

Here’s an example of a data cabinet before and after our networks team worked on it, and this is what our customer had to say:

“As well as much quicker and easier access for servicing our equipment, we have also reported an increase in the network speed and ease of use as a result of the streamlined system installed.”

So if battling with cables in your server room is holding you back; talk to us about how we can help you enjoy these same time saving and network performance benefits.