Cabling Basics - Patching in a small business or home rack

This video covers the basics of patching in a 24 or 48 port panel in a small business or possibly a large home rack. I discuss some ways to do a better job and I show several examples where it all went wrong. Larger racks will be covered in a future video. Your examples are always appreciated!

It's free, no signups, just draw.

[CherryCoke-qikz]

Great video. I've been in the business over 25 years and still enjoy seeing a well designed IT rack. It's a thing of beauty.

[DanielTekmyster]

I like to patch 24 ports from above and below each switch with 6in cables. Very clean, every port activated, and no reason to make a mess in the rack!

[techreviewsau]

Thank you for your fantastic video! I recommended the last method you showed be done at our company where I work last year, but our (stupid) ICT Consultant couldn't see why it made sense - even after explaining it more than 3 times to him. He couldn't even think ahead that it would cost us MORE money to buy longer cables and cable management rails with covers - when short 0.15m cables could be used instead. Thankfully, I won out in the end (a little bit) with 3 of our sites able to be done like you showed in your last example. Our Cabling Contractor that we brought in had never seen that done before, but it didn't take him too long to be won over after he saw how I arranged it. Keystone Jacks makes it so easy to change the arrangement also if you end up upgrading from a 24 Port Switch to a 48 Port Switch. I never saw the sense in braiding cables or tucking them away - hiding them behind a panel that just takes up extra space... especially when you may have to find a faulty or damaged cable and then unravel everything just to remove it! Thanks again for your video!!!

[PHTautomation]

You're the Bob Ross of network rack design videos!

[TechTails]

Absolutely excellent video. You are amazing, sir!

[jimsvideos]

From my naīve perspective using 4u to hold 2u of devices is inelegant, but I understand your logic and appreciate your taking the time to share it.

[pharpester]

I really commend you for going through the paces, physically showing what each option might look like. I recently purchased the neat patch for my home network build with 2 ft patch panels. I appreciate your influence on my decision to go this way. Mahalo!

[adamfloyd]

Outstanding video. Clear explanations and actually demonstrating the various approaches and results was super instructive.

[GameKingFaiz]

Appreciate you going through all that thumb work to demo each variation of this!

[kinto]

This channel is one of the best resources for home lab-ers!

I appreciate the way you presented this. You had the patience on showing us the different setups and telling the pros and cons on those setups.

P.S. You look like HBK (Shawn Michaels) from WWE. 🙂

[Squaredot]

Love the video! Thank you for taking the time to assemble and diss-assemble all the layouts. It is very helpful to us newbies!

[pharpester]

A very sound demonstration for rack building theory. Thank you.

[toshimon]

Being in IT for over 30 years and having to clean up on other's crap work, seeing those photos of typical racks gives me PTSD.

[Wignu]

Have just about finished cabling home while doing renovations (managed to sneak in a little 'server room' 🙂) so you've given me some great ideas for the cabling itself, the rack and how to patch it properly, fantastic channel.

[jamieosh]

This is the video I’d been looking for and never found. Thank you!

[JJFlores]

1:50 resonates with me a lot. I'm an IT tech at a K12 school district. Some of our network cabinets are horrendous. A lot of if it comes down to tech laziness and lack of time. 4 years ago I spent many hours during the summer cleaning out and organizing nearly 10 cabinets across 2 school sites. That was 4 years ago and I haven't had the time to do the same at my other sites. A lot of the time when we work on a cabinet, we just patch/unpatch cables quickly but don't spend the time to tidy it up. We're just too busy doing other tasks. Even when we plan during a break to clean up stuff, we get random projects thrown at us, but that's a different issue. This summer we have an all hands on deck classroom technology refresh project coming up so I doubt we will be able to clean up our cabinets.

[Subzero_]

Great explanation and details on the various ways to cable! Really good video for beginners.

[DanielTekmyster]

Your videos are perfect for use as training videos for my team!

[pawpaw]

Thanks, well done!! Excellent instruction and production quality. I wish this video had been available when installing my small network rack last year. I ended up using your exact method (24-port panel, 48-port switch, 24-port panel with short patch cables, then UDM SE manager/router), but it took a long time to experiment and get there. 😀 In contrast to a business installation, home network racks are more space-constrained. My 4U rack has no space for cable manager units, so immediately-adjacent arrangement of patch panels and switches is needed.

[bentheguru]

Not bad at all. Been doing this for over 25 years, you nail all the basics here. I persoanlly like the use of brush panels over boxes but they both work. As for switching, I try to aim for a switch a PoE switch port for every cable port, patch it all the first time and admin down ports not needed until they are.