Any of you guys have wiring closets or use Structured Wiring within your homes?

Parents' house has some renovations so I got them to run 2 CAT6 cables to each room. They all go to one place and I'm looking to see what options are best

Currently, this is in my cart:
Enclosure:
Patch panel:
Switch:

^Still debating between the 16 Port or 8 Port.. I don't think I'll use all 16 but it might be useful for upgradability sake in the future..

Drywall isn't up yet so I figured an flush enclosure tied to a stud would be ideal.


Any suggestions would be great!

 

I have a flush enclosure (Leviton) and don't like it. It is so shallow that the bends forced on the CAT5/6 cables makes them unreliable.

I still have it because my phone and coax wiring goes into it, but for the Ethernet I replaced it with a small wall-mounted rack. That has a 1U jack field for the cables that go to the house, a 1U power center, a 1U GigE switch, a 1U spacer with routing holes, and a 1U PoE injector. It is not attractive, but since it's mounted high on the wall in my basement (at the level of the main stem for the HVAC system) it doesn't matter.

It's topped with a shelf that holds my consumer grade router, cable modem, and HomeRunHD tuner.

 

Thanks Mike!

That's just the type of feedback I was looking for. I considered a rack mount solution as well but seeing as this isn't in a garage/basement deal (i had them run it all to an office room), I was looking to see if I could something a little more streamlined/clean. A rack, isn't out of the question, but since the house is still at the studs, now would be the perfect time for an enclosure.


Have you looked into something like this: It's supposed to add an extra 2 inches of depth:

 

If you're sticking with a cabinet, that ring looks like a great idea. For my home network, the rack is just much better. I have a single 48 port switch (a little more than half full) that gives me guaranteed overall network throughput that a bunch of smaller switches in a tree topography simply can't match. That doesn't work in a SW cabinet.

 

"Structured" wiring is not my strong point, but I try. Everything in my house comes back to a cabinet in my living room. I have a rack in the cabinet that houses my home theater equipment, a gigabit switch, a 24 port keystone jack patch panel, and router. I have CAT6 runs to the master bedroom, attic (for a wireless access point) and office. I'll run additional cable as needed.

It's extra messy right now since 1) the heat has caused most of the raceway to un-stick from various surfaces, and 2) my receiver will only do analog inputs to my 2nd zone (back yard speakers) so I temporarily connected my Mac Mini to the front inputs on the receiver.

 

Nice, thunder. RF remote, I assume?

 

Thanks!

Yeah, I have a Logitech Harmony 900 with what they call a "blaster" unit that communicates via RF with the remote and IR with the components. It's a little laggy, but works alright. I need to tweak with the delay settings and see if I can remove some of the lag.

 

Cool, I have the Harmony ONE, just IR...

 

Thunder, your rack looks great! Do you have any issues with temperature with it being enclosed like that?


For me, I'm still not dead set on an enclosure and may just opt for the rack now.. It'll definitely be the economical approach and probably much better for heat purposes. 48 Ports?! WOW, I have a total of 10 runs to each room but am debating between a 12 or 16-port patch panel and 12/16 port gigabit switch. I'm not sure yet but I may want to run some surveillance cameras ? Thanks all for the pictures and suggestions, I'll post updates in here when I get it all up and running.