Why use cat5 patch panel

Some businesses use structured cabling for phones or you may have multiple businesses sharing office space. In these circumstances, a patch panel would also multiple different equipment to be easily connected to any outlet. The cables on the back of patch panels correspond to permanent jack locations in the users space, which can bring easy and accurate patch panel wiring for network newbies. Besides, the ability to label individual cable runs in a patch panel creates a cleaner and more organized way of identifying signal flow, and troubleshooting technical problems becomes an easier chore.

Some believe that too many connections between patch panels and switches or other devices may affect the network throughout. Actually a proper patch panel won't decrease your network speed.

Just make sure your patch panel is rated for the cable category you are using and check if you've terminated cables using the right way. Patch panel and switch do the different things. Then you mount your ethernet switch next to it, and go between them with patch cords.

For phones, you'll wire up another patch panel with the phone lines multipled between all the jacks. Then to bring phone service to a run of house wiring, just put a patch cord between the two patch panels. Response by poster: Myself, All of the cat5e cable that has been run in the house comes to one bundle in the utility room.

They are not connected to a block of any kind. I think they are just wire nutted together if I remember right. They just hang in a bundle? That's gross. Whoever did that should be embarassed. Get a patch panel. Twice as many jacks as you have runs is a good rule of thumb, because: You're going to start by punching each run down to its own jack, following the regular color code, using the regular punchdown blade that cuts the wire after seating it in the contact.

So if you have 10 phone jacks in the house, then jacks 1 through 10 on your panel will take those. Then, you're going to flip the blade end-for-end, so you're using the one that doesn't cut the wire.

Strip the outer jacket from a few feet of scrap cat-5, and snake it back and forth in the other jacks. Say you've got a port panel, so start at port 24 and use this dont-cut blade to punch this wire into jacks 24, 23, 22, 21, etc, so they're all connected in parallel. Now, run a single phone cord from jack 24 out to the phone company's thing. Voila, your phone line s appear on all those jacks at the end of the panel. So now, if you want phone service in rooms 2 and 5, just use short patchcords to plug between jack 2 and 23, and between jack 5 and 22, for instance.

I hope that's clear. If not, I could mock this up with some spare parts and take some pictures IANANE, so that's why you get all the do-hickey terminology That device, if I am reading your post correctly, is called a toner tester. Response by poster: Myself, First - thank you and all of you for helping me out and teaching me something new. I really do appreciate it. I think I'm following you on this. I'm not quite understanding the part about the scrap piece of cat 5 and snaking it back and forth however, so photos would be very nice for that bit.

But I do indeed grasp the concept you are describing. And as I understand it, this would cover the phone side only of the networking. How would I integrate this part with a home computer network and a switch? Would I need yet another patch panel to accomplish this? To be honest, we are more likely to have just one jack in the home be dedicated to a phone jack as we use 1 base phone and then 3 other wireless phones that do not require a jack.

They just phone home to the base. The only reason I'm asking is that cost is somewhat of an issue and I'm trying to be very frugal with this and it seems to my inexperienced eyes that patch panels are more pricey than punchdown blocks.

Best answer: Okay, through the miraculous power of MS Paint, I've doodled up an explanatory graphic for your edification and my embarrassment. I've only drawn single lines to represent pairs, because drawing twisted pairs is a pain in the ass. Each jack is represented here by a square where the RJ45 connector plugs in, and a rectangle with four colored terminals on it.

If you look at the back of a patch panel you'll see something very much like this. I don't know what color your house's cat-5 is, but sky-blue is common, so that's what I drew here.

The cables dropping into the closet are terminated onto the first few jacks, using the regular punch-and-cut side of the blade. So in this example, you have five runs going out to rooms in the house. Rooms 1 and 5 are getting phone service, rooms 2 3 and 4 are getting Ethernet. So the green network switch on the right is cabled, with short burgundy patch cords, to the appropriate jacks. The trick I've done with jacks is that I've turned them into a splitter.

Using some scrap wire just yank the jacket off some spare cable , punch them down on jacks 10 and 11 using the dont-cut end of the blade, then punch on 9 and 12 using the punch-and-cut blade.

I hope the illustration is clear here. Have a question? Our Live Chat operators are ready to help! These days, it seems that just about everything is wireless.

But to take advantage of the blazingly fast Internet now available in most homes and businesses, a wired network often will allow you to achieve speeds much closer to the promised maximum. What Is A Patch Panel? If you want to set up a wired network that includes multiple wall ports in various rooms, a patch panel in a central location can provide a simple, neat and easy-to-manage solution.

So what is a patch panel you ask? A patch panel is essentially an array of ports on one panel. Each port connects, via a patch cable, to another port located elsewhere in your building.

How Do Patch Panels Work? Patch panels bundle multiple network ports together to connect incoming and outgoing lines — including those for local area networks, electronics, electrical systems and communications. When patch panels are part of a LAN, they can connect computers to other computers and to outside lines.

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