You hit the nail right on the head Chris. This is my intended use. I have
run a total of 36 cat5 cables throught the house so far (i way
underestinmated the time it would take, but fortuantely get to go back
this weekend).
Anyway, of those, 23 are designated for network use.
I have a 5 port hub :)
With a patch panel I can punch them all down on the back, nice and neat,
then label the RJ45 jacks on the front. Then use patch cables to choose
which ports to make "live".
Let's say I have 5 live in my office, but it's moday night and I want to
catch a bit of football, but also catch up on email or something. I nip
down to the basement, move one of the office jacks over to one of the
family room jacks, plug in my laptop, & wallah - I'm in business.
I currently have to pull out my 100ft cable and string it down the hall,
which I invariably end up tripping on before putting it away.
charles
who forgot how out of shape he was until trying to run a couple thousand
feet of cat5 today.
On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Chris Morton wrote:
> What a patch panel does is make it VERY easy to both organize your
> wiring runs at the hub/switch end, and to change things if necessary.
>
> Since the cable runs are punched down on the patch panel side, it's easy
> to label the jacks as to room/station number, etc. Plus since they're
> punched down, they don't move around or get mistaken for others. What a
> lot of businesses do is to run drops from any room that _might_ need
> one, back to the patch panel and punch them down ahead of time. That
> way, a patch cable only needs to be inserted between the hub and the
> panel to make that drop active, and you know which ones are which (if
> you label them).
>
> I'm sure there are other advantages as well.
>
> I've never seen a business with more than five PCs that didn't use them.
any self respecting linux nut should have one too :)
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