Cable Management: Tackling Tangles

Historically, intermediate distribution frames  in wired Ethernet environments -- the racks filled with telecommunications cable -- pose an operational challenge, as the staff involvement required for moves/adds/changes (MAC) increases across time as the complexity of the cable tangle increases. 

Moreover, tangled cable increases mean time to repair (MTTR) when components in Ethernet switches fail. As a result, a  process that can take minutes early in the life of the IDF can become an ordeal requiring hours or even days after an IDF has been in operation for years. Similarly, cable tangle increases the labor and downtime costs of equipment upgrades. On the following pages, I examine cable management approaches that keep MAC, MTTR, and upgrade costs constant across time.

Stuart Kendrick is a Systems Engineer at the Allen Institute in Seattle, WA USA. He has been supporting operational IT environments since 1985, teaches at LISA, SharkFest, and CasitConf, and specializes in monitoring and troubleshooting.