Patch Panels

[MissingLink]

Hi There

Could someone please explain to me what a patch panel for a computer network does and how you'd use them in a three story building?

Thanks

 

[koffiejunkie]

a patch panel is really there to keep your cabling tidy, and protect the ends of the cable that comes out of the wall/roof/floor/whatever. On the front you have RJ45 plugs, so you use short network cables to connect your switch to the patch pannel (each port gets a cable).

Your ports on the patch panel should be numbered and the numbers should correspond to the numbers of the network points (all over the building). So it's easy to know which port is which machine, which makes troubleshooting easy.

 

[hennievr]

Exactly what Koffiejunkie says. Will also make it much easier to pin-point a troubled cable if your cabinet is organised neatly. I suppose you can run switches on each floor and do a link-up between each switch with the cables straight from the network points. It just looks much better and more organised when all your cables coming from the floor or the roof is hidden away and you use brush panels for your patch cables.
Another benefit that I use a lot is for telephone. I cable double boxes, one for data and one for telephone. I then connect data on one patch panel and phone on another patch panel, I then put in a third one for the backbone cable that runs back to the krone blocks for the PABX. The nice thing about it is that I can then switch a phone point to a network point if i need two or switch to two telephone points.