I'm still out on whether I like Velcro or not, yes it's handy but it's also quite time consuming if you have a lot of changes.
The only thing I like to keep in mind is that a lot of our cabling is now shifting to fibre where it previously would have been copper - fibre and nylon zip ties don't go well together in my head, so maybe I'll become a bigger fan of nylon or something else
I'm still out on whether I like Velcro or not, yes it's handy but it's also quite time consuming if you have a lot of changes.
The only thing I like to keep in mind is that a lot of our cabling is now shifting to fibre where it previously would have been copper - fibre and nylon zip ties don't go well together in my head, so maybe I'll become a bigger fan of nylon or something else
I don't use zip with fiber because it is difficult to get it tight without distorting the jacket. That's why I pretty much use velcro with fiber because with the velcro strips I used it's easy to get a very tight grip without distorting the fiber jacket.
I think there are plenty of DCs which still use the wax string lacing to avoid any risk of chocking a cable. Moreover, it keeps the cabling in a neater format.
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.
You are right Neoelectric, people often think that bundling cables together is a good practice as it keeps the cables neat and compact but it usually causes cross talks which only experienced people are aware of.