TR Forums

Hello Gerbils,

I'm growing tired of the lack of organization for storage my fiber patch cables, and to a lesser extent, my copper cables. Right now, the fiber cables are in ziplock bags labeled with a sharpie (SC/LC 1M, ST/LC 2M, etc) which are all stuffed into a cardboard box. I have plenty of file cabinet space at my disposal, so something that could hang in them would be awesome. I've also considered something like this.

How do you guys organize your cables? Do you have any solutions you like or dislike?

When I was at Cisco, the labs had larger versions of bins like the one you linked to - that seemed to work well. Organised by connector type, SM/MM and length. Need to make sure the cables are held together with twist ties so they don't get tangled in the bins.

Can I revive this from the end of last year? We're looking for a good method of storing fiber jumpers as well. I'm using bins today but we're not impressed with the solution. I've thought of pegboard or even hanging pegboard. I've also thought of three ring binders stored in a book shelf type style but maybe too much of a pain to get to quickly. We don't like the bins because bugs, flies etc get in there. Some kind of hanging solution has been our desire. More comments welcome.

Spring-loaded plastic clothes pegs, two per coil of cable, the bottom one weighs the loop down and the top one can be hooked over a nail in a board, whatever.

I used to use plastic crates but no matter how careful you are about coiling things up, the Law of String means that it'll all be a tangled mess next time you need to patch something.