What is this piece of network equipment?

[radiogoober]

Quick question, what is this piece of network equipment, pointed to by the green arrow? It's sitting above a switch, and it looks like a cable hooking the switch to this piece, and this piece also has cables connecting it back to the switch in it looks like 4 ports.

 

[miles01110]

A patch panel of some sort.

 

[radiogoober]

Thank you. I just looked up what a patch panel is. Would this be used if I was wiring my home with ethernet cable and I would wire them directly into the patch panel, and then hook the front of the patch panel up to the switch? Couldn't I just easy terminate the ethernet cable with a jack and plug it right into the switch?

 

[waw74]

patch panel, used for cable management.

in theory, there should be cables leading out of the back of that panel to the rest of the house. if the first port is labeled "living room" and you plug an ethernet device into the wall jack in the living room. You would then run a short patch cable from the panel to the switch to connect that device to the network.

 

[miles01110]

Couldn't I just easy terminate the ethernet cable with a jack and plug it right into the switch?

Yes, you could. Patch panels are usually not found in home installations, there's no need.

 

[drsox]

It depends on how complex your network is.

I have a network that spans 4 floors and I use patch panels for the backbone. On each floor I have a switch, with the switches patched into the panels. If I was able to run all cables to one location, then I would have only used 1 panel, but not possible so I have used multiple 8 port panels.

An additional benefit is that it is easier to make good cable terminations with a patch panel than with an add-on ethernet plug. Really useful to ensure decent Cat6 wiring.