Steven Hildreth wrote:
> I have never understood the benefits of a "patch panel", would you
> please explain the benefits of this?
Sure. The "traditional" way of providing distribution circuits is a
punchdown block--each individual wire is punched into the block with
a tool. These provide fairly noiseless, reliable connections. They're
also a PITA to reconfigure. You have to have someone on staff, or
come in, who understands the punchdown scheme and knows how to pull,
move, and re-punchdown and test whenever you decide that jack 101 in
room 4-23 should be an analog Fax line instead of a digital voice or
data line.
An RJ-45 jackpanel, when properly wired and labeled, provides the means
to permit untrained personnel to readily change the function of the
terminal jack. There are standard wiring schemes to permit data,
digital voice, and analog telephone signals to all be sent over the
same line (at different times, of course.) So if that jack 101 needs
to be changed, you unplug the patch cord from the digital telephone
portion of the panel, and plug in one from the analog telephone line
bank. Voila!
There are drawbacks, some anecdotal, some real. For very large
installations, it can be difficult to manage a huge patch panel; it
takes much more space than an equivalent set of punchdown blocks.
You'll tend, there, to use traditional punchdowns in the main
distribution closets, and maybe jack panels in secondary locations like
labs. Some people feel that the RJ-45 connectors are more prone to
loose or noisy connections, especially over time. I've always used
best-quality or built my own, and haven't experienced this (although
patch cords will eventually fail if frequently moved--but this usually
takes years.) The panel itself adds cost to an installation, although
the savings in time and manageability usually offsets this.
If you've a totally static environment, or if you're absolutely
comfortable with punchdowns, and don't mind that even a tech good at
punchdowns will take 5-10 minutes to reconfigure a jack, while a patch
panel makes it a 30 second job, then there's no advantage to you.
Cheers,
--
Dave Ihnat
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