My First Patch Panel

D

Digital39

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 22, 2002
Messages
88
I just finished my first patch panel and was wondering if any of the gurus could chime in on if there is any reason to use one method of wiring over another. As you can see in the pictures I was running the wires in the channel vs coming in straight and having shorter strands. Maybe some tips if you notice something I should have done differently.

I also found a great punchdown tool this morning at Lowes and wanted to share that information. It does not have spring loaded impact, but it did a nice job of cutting and the stripper and cutter in the handle were very helpful. Pictures are at the bottom.

Gardner Bender Wire Stripper & Punchdown Tool
Part No. SPD-10L, $23.98

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Ran mine like that not knowing what i was doing. Thanks for the tip on the punch down tool. I need one.
 
Normally most installs use the B wiring pattern. Some residential and government use the A pattern. The standard practice would be to match what is currently in use at the site. Just make sure you have the same wiring at both ends.
That wire you used looks like stranded wire. If it is, that is not designed to be punched down to a patch panel. Otherwise it looks OK.
 
What is the benefit of B over A? I thought B was just for the crossover. It is stranded, I didn't know I shouldnt use it, I had 20 20ft patch cables so to take less time I just cut them in half and wired them up. Will it effect anything using the stranded cables?

--Edit--

I was wondering, if the cables work, could they still fail a cat5 tester? I do not have one available, but I want to make sure it is done right.
 
Digital39 said:
What is the benefit of B over A? I thought B was just for the crossover. It is stranded, I didn't know I shouldnt use it, I had 20 20ft patch cables so to take less time I just cut them in half and wired them up. Will it effect anything using the stranded cables?

--Edit--

I was wondering, if the cables work, could they still fail a cat5 tester? I do not have one available, but I want to make sure it is done right.
Click to expand...


There's no benefit between B over A. They're just two different standard. If you're using straight-through patch you just need to make sure you're using T568B or T568A on both ends. If you need to cross, then you're make a cross-over from T568B to T568A or vice versa.

If you study the sequence of the two standards you'll see that A and B is practically the same with one pair being crossed.
 
T568B is the old AT&T standard and it is used most commonly. Also you will notice that when you wire a jack to the A standard you have the blue and orange pairs in the middle 4 pins of the jack which is the same for a 2 line phone jack. As far as using stranded cable, it will work but it is not designed to be punched down to IDC termination blocks. With an application that is not going to be moved around and re-terminated you should be okay. It would be more of an issue if this was a commercial building with all stranded wire run throughout because that is not plenum rated cable. But that's a different topic altogether.
 
Just how close to 100mbit should you get with iperf? I am getting an average of 94.5 mbit/sec
 
Iperf is a benchmark utility for networks. You setup a 'server' on one end and you connect to that server from a client computer. There is then a transfer of data over a period of so many seconds and depending on how much data was transferred that is your speed.

http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/
 
Variations in the wiring of any point between the two nodes can have an impact on the overall performance of the network. If done improperly they can allow for or even create interference and cross talk issues that severely decrease the potential throughput of the circuit.
 
thats very clean.

very very clean, impressive for a first time too.

I prefer T568B because honestly, I have never in my life crossed T568A with the exception of cat3 in homes, which then really isn't T568A, but just wiring similar to it.
 
Same here, everything I run into is B. Unless someone messes it up totally and makes their own bass-ackwards color code :confused:
 
randyc said:
thats very clean.

very very clean, impressive for a first time too.

I prefer T568B because honestly, I have never in my life crossed T568A with the exception of cat3 in homes, which then really isn't T568A, but just wiring similar to it.
Click to expand...

Thanks Randy,

Here are some more pictures of when I took everything out of the rack and ran the lines.

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The cables were originally terminated patch cables and I cut them in half, so it has the original booted ends.
 
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