Patchbays - what's the point?

gypsymoth

gypsymoth

gypsymoth

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Hi all

I'm about to embark on some Cat 6 cabling around my house while I have builders in - considered powerline etc but fancy getting max network speed and future proofing

I'm planning on getting a master socket into the basement, modem attached then serving the rest of the house with internet. Essentially, all the boxes will be below ground

In a number of home network guides, they talk about using a patchbay. What's the benefit of this to someone (like me) who only plans on putting 4 ethernet faceplates around the house that's only got 3 people in it? Don't need a massively hardcore networking solution - just needs to be be tidy and easy to maintain

Wouldnt a simple gigabit switch with cabling going up into the walls do the same job or am I missing the point?

Cheers, G
 
Patch panel wouldn't be of much benefit in a home environment. Face plates would be fine providing you maybe put 2 ports per face plate, just in case of expansion.

Patch panels (or patchbays) are basically just large face plates. They do the exact same thing, just have many more ports on them. Of course, this would then require a large switch to handle it all.
 
Nymins said:
Patch panel wouldn't be of much benefit in a home environment. Face plates would be fine providing you maybe put 2 ports per face plate, just in case of expansion.

Patch panels (or patchbays) are basically just large face plates. They do the exact same thing, just have many more ports on them. Of course, this would then require a large switch to handle it all.
Click to expand...

Thanks for replying

So essentially you're saying...

-- Get a bigger gigabit switch
-- Take cat 6 cable pairs from the switch to dual faceplates in each location?

So assuming I have 4 faceplates dotted around the house, i'm looking at trailing 4 x 2 cable pairs around the house?

Cheers
 
I'd probably do something like that if I could yea. Modem -> Gigabit Switch -> Faceplate -> Device.

If you really don't want to, you could just have one port on the faceplate and just use a switch at the faceplate, but obviously it wouldn't be as neat.
 
The point of patch panels is so you can have more network lines than you have switch ports, since network drops are cheaper than switch ports when you're building an office.

It's also a nice way to have the ends labelled to say where they go as opposed to just having a bunch of wires hanging out the ceiling with tags on. If you're a home user putting a few network sockets up and they are all going to be connected to a switch and have the same network on them then you gain very little by using a patch panel.
 
At the central location you have a few options:-

  1. Just crimp plugs onto the ends of the cables
  2. Terminate the cables at another set of faceplates.
  3. Terminate the cables at a patch panel.

They'll all work.
 
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