Exactly the first thought I had, fellow old-timer.

It still happens, the modern standards just handle these impairments better with line coding, active equalization, and more sensitive modem electronics. And obviously now we have shielding requirements in the PHY for 2.5G and above. But basically as DSP got cheaper and more compact, they were able to throw more compute at the problem which made a huge difference.

I don't think I've seen a single data cable that didn't have some kinda shielding since the early nineties.

Velcro is almost always the way to go with cable management. Zip ties can easily damage the wire and encourage messy wiring since you have to cut and replace every one to change a single wire.

Wire lacing is OK for permanent installations, but good luck changing anything.

But you can cut a zip tie. This is terrible if you have to replace a cable.

You could also use tape tags on the ends, either color or number codes. Just mark both ends of each cable.

It's awful considering braided cable sleeve is orders of magnitude cheaper than IT labor.

Honestly that works as well

They only teach girls how to braid in pre school then ostracise them out of becoming power techs.

We learned how to braid rope in scouts.

The first step is using correctly sized ethernet cables. Dont use a 12 ft cable for a 3 ft run. There shouldnt be more than a foot of slack in general. You dont need to "tidy" excess you dont have.

Then, for when you do need to tidy cables, use velcro ties, not zip ties. Ideally, you still label all the runs, especially the long ones. Seems a bit redundant for 3ft, but its still helpful.

At least put in the minimum effort of trying to follow the original path (assuming someone worth their salary actually was involved in the making of the site.).

Youd be surprised at the difference in mess from just plugging 'a to b' and 'a to b via c' no matter how many techs having been involved.

Or you could mark the bad one, replace the whole set, then unbraid and toss the marked one later in a dumb meeting you have better things to do than attend or something :p

*sextuple