Cable management

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Cable management refers to an important step during the installation of building services (ie electrical services) and the subsequent installation of equipment providing means to tidily secure electrical, data, and other cables. The term is often used interchangeably to refer to products used for the purpose of managing cables or to the workmanship carried out to cables whilst being installed.

The purpose of cable management is two fold: to support the cables whilst being routed through the building from Point A to B (often called containment), and to make subsequent management of the cables through the lifetime of the installation easier.

Typically, products such as cable trays, cable ladders, and cable baskets are used to support a cable through cabling routes. The IT industry has special needs because, unlike heavy power cables, data cables often need to be added, moved, or removed many times during the life of the installation. It is usual practice to install “fixed cables” between cabling closets or cabinets. These cables are contained in cable trays etc and are terminated at each end onto patch panels in the comms cabinet or outlets at the desktop. The circuits are then interconnected to the final destination using patch leads. The difficulty is that these patch leads are installed, removed and reinstalled many times during the life of the installation.

Cables can easily become tangled, making them difficult to work with, sometimes resulting in devices accidentally becoming unplugged as one attempts to move a cable. Cable management is important in many fields, such as IT, communications, power distribution, facility wiring, local area networks, and so on.

Contents 1 Computer data cabling, structured cabling, LAN cabling 1.1 Data cabinet 1.2 Desktop 2 Cable selection 3 Cable labeling 4 In hospitals 5 References

[edit] Computer data cabling, structured cabling, LAN cabling

Generally, one end of a cable is terminated in the data cabinet. The other end of a cable ends at the desk. The cable management needs at either end are different.

[edit] Data cabinet

A full height cabinet can easily present 500+ cable outlets; some high density installations can have more. 500 outlets = 500 cables in a single cabinet. Until recently, installers have not planned the cabinet layout for subsequent patch cable management and internal layout of patch cables. Various methods have been tried to aid the securing of these cables – a typical G ring plate is shown. A recent novel approach from Answers and Solutions Ltd is to analyze the final use of the connection and using products from link Neatpatch to design cabinet equipment layouts to minimise the risk of mismanaged patching.

[edit] Desktop

Buildings and office furniture are often designed with cable management in mind; for instance, desks sometimes have holes for cables to be routed through, and floors are sometimes raised a few centimeters to allow cables to be snaked underneath. Additionally, some cables have requirements for minimum bend radius or proximity to other cables, particularly power cables, to avoid crosstalk or interference. Power cables often need to be grouped separately and suitably apart from data cables, and only cross at right angles which minimizes electromagnetic interference.

[edit] Cable selection

The choice of cables is also important; for instance, ribbon cables used to connect Parallel ATA drives to the motherboard can disrupt the airflow inside of computers, making case fans less effective; most SATA cables are more compact and therefore do not have this problem.

[edit] Cable labeling

Color-coding of cables is sometimes used to keep track of which is which. For instance, the wires coming out of ATX power supplies are color coded by voltage.^[1] Documenting and labeling cable runs, tying related cables together by cable ties, cable lacing, rubber bands or other means, running them through cable guides, and clipping or stapling them to walls are other common methods of keeping them organized. Above drop ceilings, hooks or trays are used to organize cables and protect them from electrical interference

Planning is especially crucial for cables such as Thicknet that do not bend around corners easily and fiber optic which is very difficult to splice once cut.

[edit] In hospitals

In hospital situations, cable management can be critical to preventing medical mistakes. Emergency room nurse manager Pat Gabriel said, "My wish is that we could somehow not have spaghetti on the bed. When you look at all those wires and those IV's, it's just spaghetti".^[2]

[edit] References