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How To: Manage Your Cables

David Murphy — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:21:13 -0600

Cables suck.

But it’s not your fault. You spend an hour or so arranging your desk, moving your monitor, setting up your speakers—the last thing on your mind is cable management. When it comes time to plug everything in, you just want to fire up your rig and commence fragging, or movie watching, or minesweeping. You don’t want to get arm-deep in the mucky muck you’ve created behind your computer. What you can’t see won’t hurt you, right?

Wrong. Given time, sloppy cable management always rears its ugly head. It never improves by itself, and, in fact, it gets worse with each new device you wire into your rig. But you don’t have to get crazy to get clutter free and connected. We’ve broken cable management into four easy steps, and you probably already have all the tools you need!

1. Untangle Your Cables

It goes without saying, be sure your computer is off before you start yanking every cable in sight. And pull gently.

The back of your computer can look bad enough if you’re a simple PC user; if you’re a gadget geek, it turns into a mythological nightmare. First, there are the must-have cables: a power cable for the computer itself, video and power cables for the monitor, a cable for your mouse and keyboard, and a network cable. Sound enthusiasts will add a few more to the mix, as a typical 5.1 setup comes with cables for all five satellites, a power cable for the subwoofer, and possibly an additional cable for an external volume control.

Get a little fancier and you can throw in a USB headset for gaming, two cables to power and connect an external drive, USB and power cables for a printer, and a USB cable for a webcam. That puts us at 19 separate cables, all undoubtedly going to a single tower and surge protector.

Before you start tidying, you need to start untangling. And to untangle, you must first unplug. Going with the clean-slate approach is the best way to start managing your cable catastrophe. It’s impossible to make order out of a chaotic mess of wires. You’ll save far more time by disconnecting all your cables and carefully laying them on the floor next to your workspace. If you’re overambitious, you can organize the cables by type—speaker, USB, power—but no matter how you do it, you’ll want to have a game plan.

2. Label Your Cables

You can certainly tell some cables from others by sight alone, but what about all of those black USB cords you have? Or your speaker wires?

Don’t use a Sharpie to label cables—it will surely make a mess. Thin-tipped markers are your friends.

Labeling your cables is just as important as tying them together because you don’t want to have to trace through a tangled web of cords to find out what’s what. You can buy fancy labels from the store or do what we did—use colored tape to label cables by type (USB, power, etc.), then write their purposes on the tape itself.

3. Protect your Power

Most computer-based cables are thin, efficient, and tidy. By comparison, power cables are large, unwieldy, and irritating. And they take up a ton of room when they’re all jacked into a single surge protector.

Just throwing a surge protector on the floor is the surest way to begin a cable nightmare. Concealing wires is an art form, and you can start your magnum opus by making sure your surge protector stays in one place. We used screws, but you can also use Velcro strips to mount your power strip. Some good target locations include baseboards, the underside of your desk, or even the back of a desk leg.

4.Clamp your Cables

Now that you have laid the framework for your masterful movement toward cable happiness, it’s time to get to the nitty-gritty. Grab your zip ties, roll up your sleeves, and start bunching cables together. Be sure to combine like-minded cables as much as possible. For example, speaker wires shouldn’t go alongside USB cords, as your speakers might pick up interference when you use a USB device. The same is true for network cables and power cords—consider them the oil and water of your wiring setup.

Tie, tie, tie. You can never use enough cable ties, trust us. They’re easy to cut off if you make a mistake, just don’t nick a cable along with the tie.

Start at the back of your motherboard and work your way toward each major area in your workstation: desk, subwoofer, and so forth. Keep the overall line tight by throwing on a new tie every six inches or so. And once you’re done, you can use cable clips to conceal these larger cable mash-ups along the underside of your desk.

Do's and Don'ts of Cable Routing (Part 2)

Michael Brown — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:49:29 -0500

Here’s the second in my two-part blog post on best practices for cable runs. You can read Part 1, which has some important background information about this project, here.

DO RUN ETHERNET EVERYWHERE

Having access to open walls during construction is a rare opportunity, so I ran Ethernet cable everywhere I could think of, including into my garage. I ran four cables into rooms in which I knew I’d be connecting more than one piece of gear (e.g., into my home theater and my home office). If you’re going through the hassle of stringing cable, you might as well and go all the way and take it to as many places as you can access. Even if you have just a single Ethernet port, you can always plug in a router to gain more later.

DON’T RUN CAT5 CABLES PARALLEL TO POWER CABLES

My installer knows better than this, but I asked him to do it anyway because I ignored the advice above and decided to run Ethernet to my kitchen island after we had already installed the cable chases and poured the foundation. Running data cable parallel to power cable typically results in interference, but we decided to take a chance since this run is only about 15 feet long. If I do encounter problems, I can simply disconnect this cable from the network and the problem will be solved.

DO CROSS POWER CABLES AT A 90-DEGREE ANGLE

It’s impossible to avoid putting your Cat5 cable in close proximity to power cables, but there’s an easy way of avoiding interference problems: Hang your Ethernet cables from your trusses to kept them away from power cables, and when they must drop down to enter the wall’s top plate, have it cross any power cables at a 90-degree angle.

DON’T BUNDLE YOUR CABLE TIGHTLY

It’s okay to run your data, telephone, and coax video cable together, but you should avoid tying the cables into overly tight bundles. You should also make sure your cable turns are gentle; a kinked cable can have a significant and negative impact on network throughput.

DO USE MUD RINGS

Use mud rings instead of junction boxes for Ethernet, coax, and speaker cable runs (you can find them for both retrofit and new-construction applications). Since you’re dealing with low voltage, it’s not necessary to terminate the cable inside the confines of a box. Mud rings are much easier to work with: You won’t need to stuff excess cable into the box, which means you’re much less likely to kink the cable and throttle your throughput.

Belkin N1 Wireless Router

Michael Brown — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 17:14:49 -0500

Belkin picked Atheros’ XSPAN Draft 802.11n chipset for the N1, which we tested with the company’s matching N1 Wireless Notebook card. Although the N1’s formfactor is very similar to Belkin’s earlier “Pre-N” MIMO router, the resemblance ends as soon as you power it up: Six blue diagnostic LEDs light up in sequence to help you through the installation process.

The lacquer-black enclosure is attractive, but we can’t decide if the LEDs make the device look too newbie-friendly, or just plain gaudy. Either way, the diagnostic LEDs show you exactly where the problems with your connection lie—making this router a nice fit for wireless-networking neophytes.

Belkin advertises a staggering 300Mb/s transmission rate for the N1, with this disclaimer: “300Mb/s is a physical data rate. Actual data throughput will be lower.” We achieved an impressive unencrypted TCP throughput of 129.7Mb/s with our notebook PC in the same room as the router (see Environment 1 in the benchmark chart), but speeds dropped quickly as we introduced distance and interior walls.

In Environment 2 (25 feet from the access point, with four gypsum walls in between), TCP throughput dropped to 72.7Mb/s. And in Environment 3 (75 feet from the access point on an outdoor patio), TCP throughput dropped to 62.3MB/s.

If you absolutely can’t wait another year for the interoperability that the real 802.11n standard will bring—and you can’t get enough of blue LEDs—Belkin’s N1 is a good choice.

Month Reviewed: September 2006

+ IMPLANTS: Super-easy setup and troubleshooting; very good range and speed.

- DENTURES: Puts on an unwelcome light show; might be incompatible with real 802.11n gear.

VERDICT: 8

URL: www.belkin.com