I am in the process of wiring my home with cat6 cable. My server and all network equipment will be contained in a small closet located under the stairs of a 2 story house. The closet is very small, approximately 3' wide x 4' deep. Because of this, I will have very little room to work on anything in the closet. This closet will also have a trap door that accesses the basement only incase of emergencies (heat goes out in the winter and I do not have access to the outside basement door due to snow).
Because of this, I am planning on a server rack that has casters and can be pulled out of the closet if necessary. But this leads me to another dilemma. If all the wall jacks I install throughout the house lead back to this closet, I know conventional wisdom is to terminate them at the patch panel. However, I worry about that much cabling (probably around 60ish) while pulling the rack out of the closet. I know I can leave enough length so that it is possible, but then I have the weight of the extra lenght pulling down, not to mention all the extra cable laying in the way of the trap door. The other option would be to remove the patch panels before taking the server rack out of the closet, but this seems to be very problematic. They are made to go in from the front, not slide through. On top of that, then the cabling would be supporting the patch panels as they free hang from the cabling.
The solution I have come up with is to terminate each of the runs at another jack. What I mean is, if I have a 4 port wallplate in my bedroom, I would terminate the other end at another 4 port wallplate mounted behind the server. I would continue this for all the ports in my home. That way, the only thing I would need to do is punch down short patch cables from the back of the patch panel. This would mean I would only have to unplug the wall outlets behind the server to be able to pull the entire thing out.
So instead of being the preferred:
wall jack------>patch panel------->switch
all of my runs would be:
wall jack------->wall jack------->patch panel------->switch
My question is, is this a bad idea? I realize adding an extra connection will degrade the signal, I just don't know by how much? If it is a tiny amount, I don't really care. But if it will cut it down a lot, I will have to come up with a different solution.
Also, if I do end up doing it this way, what kind of cable should I use for the patch cables between the back of the patch panel and the wall jack behind the server rack? I assume solid core, like is in the wall, if for no other reason than becasue that is what is meant to be punched into the patch panels.
Thanks, all!
Because of this, I am planning on a server rack that has casters and can be pulled out of the closet if necessary. But this leads me to another dilemma. If all the wall jacks I install throughout the house lead back to this closet, I know conventional wisdom is to terminate them at the patch panel. However, I worry about that much cabling (probably around 60ish) while pulling the rack out of the closet. I know I can leave enough length so that it is possible, but then I have the weight of the extra lenght pulling down, not to mention all the extra cable laying in the way of the trap door. The other option would be to remove the patch panels before taking the server rack out of the closet, but this seems to be very problematic. They are made to go in from the front, not slide through. On top of that, then the cabling would be supporting the patch panels as they free hang from the cabling.
The solution I have come up with is to terminate each of the runs at another jack. What I mean is, if I have a 4 port wallplate in my bedroom, I would terminate the other end at another 4 port wallplate mounted behind the server. I would continue this for all the ports in my home. That way, the only thing I would need to do is punch down short patch cables from the back of the patch panel. This would mean I would only have to unplug the wall outlets behind the server to be able to pull the entire thing out.
So instead of being the preferred:
wall jack------>patch panel------->switch
all of my runs would be:
wall jack------->wall jack------->patch panel------->switch
My question is, is this a bad idea? I realize adding an extra connection will degrade the signal, I just don't know by how much? If it is a tiny amount, I don't really care. But if it will cut it down a lot, I will have to come up with a different solution.
Also, if I do end up doing it this way, what kind of cable should I use for the patch cables between the back of the patch panel and the wall jack behind the server rack? I assume solid core, like is in the wall, if for no other reason than becasue that is what is meant to be punched into the patch panels.
Thanks, all!
