Why Your Office Cables Look Like Spaghetti and How to Fix It
Things recently found behind the reception desk of a busy office in Nairobi: three chargers for phones nobody owns, a router from an era before smartphones, a Christmas light that was never taken down, one sock, and a grey cable that, when unplugged by an enthusiastic cleaner, took down the M-Pesa till, the printer and the CEO's video call at the same time. If your office network cabling looks like a plate of spaghetti, you are in large and well-tangled company.
How offices end up in a tangle
Nobody plans a cable mess. It grows, the way a WhatsApp group grows from five people to two hundred. The office starts with four desks and one router. Then a new hire arrives, so someone runs a long cable across the floor "for now". Then a printer, a CCTV recorder, a second router because the Wi-Fi does not reach the boardroom, and an extension cable plugged into another extension cable plugged into a third.
Every one of those decisions made sense on the day. Together, they create a situation where nobody knows which cable does what, and the only person who might know, Wekesa from IT support, left two years ago.
Why the spaghetti actually matters
It is tempting to treat this as a tidiness issue, like a messy drawer. It is not. Messy cabling has real costs.
Downtime when someone unplugs the wrong thing, which always happens at the worst moment
Slow troubleshooting, because nobody can trace a cable from one end to the other
Tripping hazards for staff and visitors, especially with cables across walkways
Overloaded extension cables and adaptors, which can overheat and become a fire risk
Equipment that overheats because cables block airflow around routers and servers
An office that looks disorganised to every client who walks past reception
On the power side, please take daisy-chained extension cables seriously. If your sockets are sprouting adaptors like a tree, ask a qualified electrician to check the load and add proper sockets. That is not a job for the colleague who once watched a video about wiring.
Sorting out your office network cabling
You can make a big difference in a single Saturday morning with some patience, a few supplies and a strict ban on anyone touching anything that is "working fine".
Take photos of everything before you touch it, so you can undo mistakes
Trace each cable and label it at both ends, such as Reception PC or Till Router
Remove anything unused, including that router from the previous decade
Bundle cables with reusable velcro ties rather than tight plastic ones
Run cables along walls or under desks in trunking or trays, never across walkways
Replace cheap extension cables with properly rated power strips with surge protection
Velcro ties are the unsung heroes here. Plastic cable ties look neat until you need to add or remove one cable and have to cut the whole bundle open with a kitchen knife.
Protect it from Kenyan power surprises
Blackouts and power surges are part of office life here, along with the dramatic sigh everyone makes when the lights flicker. Your network equipment deserves protection. Put the router, the main switch and anything that handles payments on a UPS, so a short outage does not drop calls or interrupt transactions. Use surge protection for the rest. When the power comes back with a bang, you want the surge protector to take the hit, not the expensive equipment behind it.
Moving or expanding? Plan it properly
If you are moving into a new office or expanding, this is your chance to start clean. Proper structured cabling means network points installed in the walls, all running back to a single, labelled patch panel in a small cabinet. Adding a desk then becomes a matter of plugging in a short cable, not running a new one across the floor.
Keep a simple network map as well, even a hand-drawn diagram that shows where the internet comes in, where the router and switches sit, and which points serve which rooms. Store it somewhere more than one person can find it.
A practical tip to finish: once everything is labelled, take a photo of the tidy result and stick a printed copy inside the cabinet door. The next time something goes wrong, whoever opens it will know exactly which cable is the grey one, and that it must never, ever be unplugged for a phone charger. For bigger setups, our IT services include planning a network that grows without tangling.