There’s a good tutorial over at Instructables on making custom ethernet prongs out of zip-ties if the original snapped off. I had a busted cat5 cable causing me trouble and, surprisingly, I had the right size zip ties stowed away in my electronic gear. So, I gave it a shot.
The result ended up better than expected. The only adjustment I made was to loop some electrical tape around the prong piece to keep everything tidy and secure the prong in place.
Who knows why the guy that designed ethernet cable heads placed the prong point towards the cable and away from the plug. They are extremely fragile and frequently snap off when you simply try to pull a cable from behind a desk or out of a nest of wires. You’d think there would be a ubiquitous design that doesn’t have this flaw.
I’m actually tempted to snap off all the prongs on all my cables and replace them with zip-ties since this hack version correctly points the prong away from the wire making untangling much safer.
There is a common design to address this.
http://images.google.com/images?q=ethernet%20snagless
It’d be nice if it were part of the connector itself, though (if you’re crimping your own Ethernet cables, you can’t really make a snagless stresss relief boot yourself).