To me the deciding point is if you intend to connect every single room and how important a clean look is to you. If every room will be connected to the switch and you don't mind a bit of mess, then skip the patch panel. But if you plan to leave some connections disconnected until needed to save space on the switch, or just like the clean look, then go for the patch panel. For the modem and router, I don't connect those to the patch panel, that's just for the wires to the rooms in the house.
You'd plug the modem into the router and the router into the switch. Then the switch would be connected to every port on the patch panel that you want to have active. As an aside, I did use a patch panel in my home network, and not every connection goes to the switch in my setup. On the UPS powering the network equipment, only the modem, router with 4 ports , and voip equipment is on the battery backup, and the switch is only protected from surges.
Rooms that have UPS powered equipment are connected directly to the router, along with another room that I wanted to prioritize traffic separately. If using the correct connectors ones rated for solid wires, or more typically for both solid and stranded wires, rather than the ones rated only for stranded wires plug connections are quick and easy, and there's two fewer places to fail the patch panel jack and the patch panel end of the patch cable.
I've seen enough patch panel jack failures to be wary of them when I don't need them. However, I own and use an RJ crimper and I can prepare and crimp a cable about as fast as I can punch one down. If you do NOT own and use a crimper, you might prefer to be able to replace patch cables rather than having to re-terminate a wall cable, in the event that a cable did fail.
Cheesy plastic punch-down tools are typically thrown in in for free with jacks, and a decent quality punch-down tool is cheaper than a decent quality crimper if you want to have better tools to fix your own network if it breaks. In the vast majority of home installs, nothing moves in the network closet, so the arguments based on "cable movement, cable flexing, cables breaking at the wall due to flexing" are based mostly on imagination. Likewise with repatching - it pretty much never happens in a home.
The only time I've seen cable damage not right at the connector is when a cable is run out of the wall to an end-user computer. Otherwise it's nearly always within 4" of the end of the cable, and usually right at the plug - and only for plugs that are actually moved on a frequent basis. I have seen "a bundle of cables run right into a switch" break "at the wall" exactly As for aesthetics, I find no real benefit - first, it's in a closet, not in the center of the living room wall.
If you don't have to look at it, looks don't count. Second, a whole cluster of patch cables is ultimately about as messy as a whole bundle of cables coming from the wall. Labeling is easily managed with wire labels directly on the wires. I'm with your subcontractor - if you'd rather have it, more profit to her or him.
And kudos to him or her for not simply trying to hard sell you on it so as to gain the profit. And if you really, really want to make it fancy and nice looking, consider the living room wall, rather than hiding it in a closet I put in a patch panel because I was doing it myself, and I though it looked cool, but it's not really going to get you any extra functionality if your switch and router are in the same location.
I don't see a "need" for it. Basically what you're going to have is 24 CAT6 cables coming out of the wall, terminating into your patch panel, and then 24 12" CAT6 patch cables going between the panel and the switch.
You could just put some RJ45 connectors on your cables coming out of the wall and plug them right into the switch. Where it can help is if you ever need to make any room-to-room connections. It also "cleans up" the install and makes it look fancy and professional. If you have to terminate the wires yourself, I'd rather punch them down to a patch panel rather than trying to terminate everything with RJs depending on the number.
Are you talking about using a patch panel as opposed to just pulling a bundle of cables out of your wall into your switch? This is much more than an issue of convenience or cosmetics. The reason that permanently installed wiring is always terminated in outlets or patch panels is to protect it from flexing or bending when in use. This is true of all wiring: power, phone, co-ax, cat-5, whatever. Bending a wire will cause it to eventually break. If you leave your network cable just protruding from the wall, when it breaks it will be at the most inconvenient place -- where it comes out of the wall.
And it will break at the most inconvenient time -- when you're unplugging and replugging things in the midst of troubleshooting. If you install a patch panel, then your patch cords will do all the bending. You can replace a patch cord without damaging any walls.
I'm a little worried that your subcontractor doesn't seem to understand this. I would never allow permanent wiring of any stripe to be installed where it would normally be moved, flexed, or bent during its lifetime. Presumably your in-wall wires are solid. Patch cables are mass-produced and very cheap. It will take you far less time to wire the patch panel than to wire the individual mod plugs, and your setup will look far neater.
Additionally, it is much easier to diagnose a bad cable connection with a jack than with a mod plug; with the jack a wire is usually loose or not attached. Sign up to join this community. Since you are planning to overprovision have more connection points than connected devices , this lets you connect only the ports you want to have 'live' to the switch, and to change them over in the future, without having to mess around with your solid cables.
You're also much less likely to bump the switch off the table and pull a jack through the wall if the switch is connected via patch cable to the patch panel than directly connected to the fixed wiring.
Yes, it's a cost. But if you're going through the trouble of running the cables in the wall, it's probably worth doing the rest properly as well. For me, it's just one piece of doing a wire job "properly.
Along the wire runs I use velcro to fix the wire in place. For what you are describing, it doesn't seem like it will add anything of value to your install. And I don't blame you for taking shortcuts, retro-fitting any structure with low voltage wire properly is a giant PITA.
I've done it for a long time and built up a decent list of tools to do the job including long drill bits, 90 degree drill adapters, wire snake, fiberglass rods, pull string, a torch and plugs for bending conduit, and drywall repair tools.
I'd say absolutely. They aren't required, but they are wonderful to have. I can think of several reasons: It allows you to flexibly move and segment different portions of your network.
It prevents you from continually moving the "last meter" of cord, risking damage to the cable that is, even if a patch cord fails, you can easily replace it, not so much an in-place install As your use patterns change family members moving about from room to room, say like when Jr. If an in-wall cable fails for whatever reason driving a nail for picture hanging, adding a pass through, etc you still have options in terms of alternate paths.
Ease of identification. You can link room-to-room at the patch panel quite easily, should you need to. Finally, it provides a structured environment that looks far better than loose cables sticking out of walls.
The obvious downside is some additional cost The peg board is on 2 x 4s just below a drop ceiling. So the wires come down from the drop ceiling, behind the peg board to their respective location. A patch panel would have been one extra item to clutter up the wall.
Quote: I'd say absolutely. For long-term reliability, why not? Besides, they're dirt cheap I have a patch panel in my house. It's a godsend.
I can move the phone from one spot to another has happened three times in the last year already! Phone plugs rj11 fit just fine in the rj45 connections. I am lucky that my apartment had a number of empty conduits in it so I could get cables pulled without having to drill through the reinforced concrete. Other benefits have already been mentioned, but it is a nice way to reduce clutter no wire ends and plugs in the rooms that currently do not have something connected and it simply feels right.
The only downside is that my rack is half-width, which means the little box housing everything doesn't allow wide devices. Long story short, yes, I'd recommend a patch panel, but only if you also take the time to get a proper rack and possibly even a box with a door to keep everything in. For a small installation like yours I can see why you wouldn't want to use a patch panel. It sounds like you're only going to have 3 wires coming in there, correct?
If so, then you'd just put another 4 keystone jack and terminate the cables there. Then you have the benefits of a fixed patch panel without needing, well, a patch panel. Thanks all for the feedback. I will not be having a rack or any type of mount. I don't have room in my house for it and the point is for it to be out of the way, thus me wanting to put the equipment on a top shelf near the ceiling of my laundry room.
With that in mind, unless there's something I'm missing like putting the patch panel in the attic attached to Right now I was planning on having wires going from the wall jacks, up the walls, across the attic, all dropping down and hooked up into my 8 port switch. I bought all 4 jack wall plates because they came in a 10 pack and it didn't seem worth it to buy one 1 jack plate, one 2 jack plate, and one 4 jack plate to accomplish the minimum of what I want.
So it sounds like the core benefit I'd get from a patch panel is to make it easy to drop 4 wires for each wall plate, have them all hooked up, and just connect the patch connectors to the switch for what is actually in use and leave the rest for expansion.
If I'm using a patch panel it sounds like I can just identify which ports go to the router internet and to the modem, and just patch those straight to each other. Another thing I saw in a few responses was the concept of patch panels allowing segmentation. Can someone expand on this? What kind of segmentations would I do? That's the only segmentation that I can see as being useful and keeping what needs to be repaired to a minimum, but I"m not totally sure if that makes sense or is overkill.
Thanks again. Quote: So it sounds like the core benefit I'd get from a patch panel is to make it easy to drop 4 wires for each wall plate, have them all hooked up, and just connect the patch connectors to the switch for what is actually in use and leave the rest for expansion.
Quote: Another thing I saw in a few responses was the concept of patch panels allowing segmentation. If you often have guests, it provides you a way to isolate them on to a guest network well, you can do it without a patch panel as well, but it makes a clean and easily recognized separation. About Us. 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. Those lines, in turn, allow LANs to connect to wide area networks or to the Internet. To arrange circuits using a patch panel, you simply plug and unplug the appropriate patch cords. Troubleshooting problems are simplified with patch panels since they provide a single location for all input jacks.
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