Week 3 - Clear: Networking in Real Life; Patch Panels

Patch panels are probably the most infuriating things I have ever worked with in my career.  They are also the most convenient and make everything run that much smoother.  The annoyance and pain is worth it in the end.

Installing a patch panel was about as difficult as Professor Olson described it as being.  Running cables through pipes and through the ceiling tiles and using the punch tool to put the wires into the network jack.  The punch tool was probably the biggest pain of the entire process, but it's impossible to do the job without it.  Here's a picture of one:

                                                                        Copyright of Cat5eCableGuy.com

As I've said this is the most important tool in the patch panel process.  You'll hate it throughout the experience, but you'll love it in the end, because once you've got all your cables zip-tied together and looking pretty, there are no more cables just running all over the place in your work environment or home.

The patch panel is probably mostly used for work environments, though.  They're generally used for when you have large amounts of users in a single location.  They make everything look cleaner and more efficient looking than just having a tangle of cable going from all the separate machines to your switch/router.