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What Is a Patch Panel and Why Do You Need It?
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
What Is A Patch Panel?
A patch panel is a piece of hardware with multiple ports that helps organize a group of cables. Each of these ports contains a wire that goes to a different location, such as computer stations, servers, switches, electric or electronic instruments.
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Copper patch panels
Copper patch panel, also called ethernet patch panel or RJ45 Patch Panel, is designed for both shielded and unshielded copper cables like Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6a and Cat7. This copper patch panel is commonly used in a local area network (LAN) as a mounted hardware assembly that consists of ports to connect and manage incoming and outgoing Ethernet cables. It is compliant with TIA/EIA 568 industry specifications and features both T-568A and T-568B wiring configurations. These patch panels can maximize the network performance and keep up with the growing changes in the network.
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Fiber Optic Panels
Fiber optic patch panels are also known as fiber distribution panels. They make it easy to terminate fiber optic cables and provide access to the cable’s individual fibers for cross connection.
In physical terms, a basic fiber optic panel is typically a metal enclosure that encloses the adapter panels and fiber splice trays. Splice trays allow fibers to be fused together with fiber optic pigtails which in turn are plugged into the fixed inside ports of the adapter panels.
The inside ports of the panel are usually fixed, meaning that the cables aren’t disconnected at any point. The outside ports of the panel are reserved for fiber patch cables that can be plugged and unplugged frequently to arrange the connections between devices as needed.
Fiber patch panel has two compartments. One contains the bulkhead receptacles or adapters, and the other is used for splice tray and excess fiber storage.
- Breakout Patch Panel: breakout patch panels are specifically designed for high-density 40G-10G and 100G-25G breakout cabling. As an agile and scalable solution to mitigate cable clusters and improve airflow, breakout patch panels deliver aesthetic appeal and make the data center a more inviting place. The breakout patch panels in FS come with both single mode and multimode options.
- Modular Patch Panel: rack mount modular fiber enclosure panel and multimedia adapter panel are the two common types of modular panels. The former can hold up to 4 FHD MTP cassettes or fiber adapter panels, fitting for both front and rear mounting in horizontal cable management. The latter can allow users to customize their own adapter panel in a high-density cabling system.
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Coax Patch Panels
Coaxial cable is most commonly used for AV installations. Coax patch panels connect devices such as television media players and video cameras to centralized AV switching and mixing systems. AV patch panels and network patch panels often coexist within the same wiring closet or data center.
How Do Patch Panels Work?
Patch panels connect various IT devices together. They are in many different environments including communications closets, telephone company central offices, and data centers. Understanding the role they play can help to determine if your facility requires a patch panel, and if so, how to set it up.
Each port in a patch panel goes to a different device somewhere in the facility. Each panel bundles all the connections together in order to connect to another network. This is often how a LAN connects to a WAN, or to the Internet. Patch panels are also commonly used in facilities with a lot of telephone lines, in which one mainline is used for all phones.
Advantages Of Patch Panels
Patch panels are one of the oldest types of technical equipment still popular today. They are quite simple in their design and function, but still, help to improve the organization and function of a data center or almost any other environment with lots of equipment.
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Scalability – After installing a patch panel, you can easily add new devices without having to run new cables end-to-end.
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Reduces Cable Clutter – Patch panels are typically located closer to the actual equipment. This makes it possible to use a shorter patch cable. From the panel, a fiber optic or other high-capacity connection runs to the next network or the internet.
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Inexpensive – Patch panels aren’t considered “smart” devices in that they don’t perform any function other than facilitating the passing of data. This means they are very inexpensive.
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Lowering Cable Cost – Having a patch panel allows you to use shorter cables, which cost less than longer ones. Typically, you can also use inexpensive cat-5 cables to get to the patch panel rather than costly fiber optics.
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Easier Maintenance – If you ever need to run a test cable, test a port, or perform any other common maintenance tasks, it can be done more quickly and is much easier than if each device had a cable run to its final destination.
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Aesthetic Appeal – No one would deny that organized cabling is always a fantastic visual feast for everyone. We've seen lots of before-and-after pic about cabling with the help of using patch panels and other cable management tools and we've witnessed their magic power to rearrange messy spaghetti in your rack or cabinet. If you are annoyed with such a mess, the best way to reduce cable clutter more effectively is to use a fiber patch panel or Ethernet patch panel.
Do I Need A Patch Panel Or Just A Switch?
The main differences between the switch and patch panels are that the switch does a lot more of the technical work.
A switch connects all devices together to receive and transmit exact messages to the target device end. A patch panel is instead nothing but an essential cable management tool, which exerts no functional influence to the performance of data transmission. However, a patch panel is no doubt a glorified organization device, which provides ease management of classification, maintenance, repair, installation and upgrades.
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