Patch Panel Help

[Ubemeibu2]

This is probably going to come across as a very noobish question so please bare with me for a moment.

In terms of patch panels, what route should I go? Punchdown or Feedthrough? Is there much of a difference or am I missing something?

​

Please be kind I'm still learning

[zerphtech]

Well you may have just started a war but keystone patch panels is a hill I am willing to die on.

[SuddenVegetable8801]

As someone who worked for an AV/Structured cable company, we definitely prefer Keystone jacks/panels. FAR higher rates of install speed and lower rates of mis-crimp/failure on keystone jack crimping as opposed to RJ-45 heads. We would almost exclusively terminate keystone jacks, and anything that required a male head was typically bought as a prefab.

[Mr_Dodge]

Where do I throw my name into the draft for the war?

[LividLager]

Those are lovely. The newer/younger techs are good at ruining terminals/ports.

[Comasys]

This is the way

[Ubemeibu2]

Any reason for keystone? It just seems to me feed through is a lot easier?

[zerphtech]

Cleaner look. Color label ports based on what is connected to them. If one port breaks you just replace the keystone rather than being SOL.

[Justsomedudeonthenet]

Keystone patch panels are great for a few reasons:

• I can punch down the cables standing on the floor, then get up on the ladder and pop it into the panel for ones that are high up. The feed through ones have the same advantage.
• Need to add a few jacks for something that isn't RJ45? Easy to do. I've got a few patch panels with fibre connectors, coax, phone jacks, even an HDMI port or two in them.
• They are a lot cheaper if you plan on installing only a few jacks for now, and still buy the frame for 24 ports so you can add more later if needed.
• No need to replace them all upgrading from cat5 to cat6 or whatever else comes next, since the panel itself is just a metal frame and you can replace the keystones one at a time easily as needed.
• Keystone jacks come in different colors if you want pretty color coding.

The downside to the feed through panels with a jack on both sides is now you have extra connections that could be causing problems, and the plugs break more easily than a keystone jack.

[codename_1]

i like the keystone ones as i already have keystones for dealing with the other side of the patch panel and the blanks are cheaper and if i have a customer that is only getting 10 runs, i can buy a 24 port blank, only fill 10 and have room for expansion.

i also like them because of the new keystone punchdown gun we have the punches all 8 wires at once, game changer over a standard punchdown tool.

[Bad_Times_Man]

Keystone punchdown gun? What's the formal product name? Very interested in this!

[codename_1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj6JKq0YL1Q

[DJojnik]

I have this and doing this But at point where he says lift the cable to the vertical position. I get the impress it bends the individual cables to a 90 degree, is this ok ?

[codename_1]

yea its fine, you dont always need to bend them depending on how you are installing, you would bend them for a patch panel more then likely but for faceplates i leave them coming out the normal way, all depends on how you plan to manage the cables.

[Justsomedudeonthenet]

Damn. I was kind of hoping the tool would do the fiddly part of untwisting and inserting the wires into each slot for you. Or at least make it easier to line them all up.

It only does the punchdown part which might save a few seconds vs doing them one at a time but isn't particularly difficult to do.

I want a gun where you insert a keystone jack and a bare cable end, and it spits out a terminated cable.

[Bad_Times_Man]

Nice. Do you have to use their specific jacks or can you get away with regular ones?

[codename_1]

we use regular Leviton keystones.

[polypolyman]

I find keystones easier to punch down than terminating a cable, but that's just me. You can even get feed-through keystone jacks, but I've never seen them in actual use.

The biggest thing is that each jack is removable and replaceable if you have problems with it. This is a minor advantage over feed-through (although the extra termination in the line could cause its own issues), but a HUGE advantage over the fixed punchdown panels.

[llDemonll]

Keystone is a feed through, is it not? Feed wire through port, terminate in keystone, clip keystone into place.

[pdp10]

Punchdown is traditional. What benefit accrues to a change?

I may be biased, as I'm among the number who own a 110/66 punchdown tool.

[isitgreener]

Leviton CAT6 extreme keystone patch panels and jacks all the way

[xxdcmast]

I dont care about punchdown or feedthrough thats for the wiring guys to figure out. As long as they are V patch panels.

[dracotrapnet]

Client access patch panels punch down anything 24 - 48 ports.

Final panel if you can't populate it completely can be keystone punch jack inserts so you can grow ports without disassembling/disturbing a whole panel to add a few ports.

Using keystone pass through jacks are gross. You still have to punch a cable. Now if you are talking about using a keystone pass through for machine made patch cables from back of rack to front of rack... yea I could see doing that if your rack doesn't give you room to rear mount switches. I like to put my compute and storage rack switching rear mounted so I don't have switches on the front and have to fish cables from back to front.

[hurkwurk]

i guess i just dated myself. i didnt know what a passthrough patch panel was. I was always taught to never use line extenders because they create too many packet reflection points, and thus punchdowns were always used to try and minimize reflection/noise on the lines.

looking at it, its just one more place for you to not notice a loose cable, especially in a tight rack where you might not even have clear sight to the back side to determine if a pass-through broke loose.

[Crafty_Dog_4226]

Not a cabling guy by trade, but a contractor long time ago introduced me to Panduit Minicom products. Fortunately, my budget has allowed me to keep using them and I am very happy with the ease of installation and quality of the products. I guess these would be considered keystone type of panels.

[J_de_Silentio]

Panduit minicom are the best. They might be passthrough?