So I just had a discussion with some cable installers and they're telling me that they've learned keeping cables in neat, tight, bundles was bad practice as it increased the chances of alien crosstalk.
I spoke with a Berk-Tek rep afterwards and that person told me the same thing that it's bad practice and that a lot of cable installers don't do it anymore for that reason. According to Berk-Tek they've done a series of tests called '6 around 1' which tests the communication strength of a cable in a worst case scenario. That scenario being a single cable surrouned by 6 others in a neat and tight fashion. When bound together that way there's an increase in alien crosstalk from the 6 to 1.
When just installed in a random fashion, as in pulling bundled cables where they sort of criss cross without straightening them, the alien crosstalk is diminished because of the randomness of the way cables wrap around one another. I've heard this from three different sources now that are intimate with the cabling industry.
Nowadays what some cable installers do is just wrap the bundled cable in a mesh to maintain some sort of aesthetics. Berk-Tek claims their CAT6 cable products are immune to the added effects of 6 around 1 because of the additional shielding, but other manufacturers have not adopted the Berk-Tek standard of manufacturing and engineering of cables. I'm not sure how true that is but Berk-Tek will guarantee the communication quality even in a worst case scenario, ie. a bundle of 200 cables and such.
I think I'll speak with another company to get more information about this.
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