sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Wall Mount Rack for Comm Room

I've recently decided that a wall mount solution would be best for the dental office I'm working with.

I've got a 12U Hoffman Wall Mount Swing Rack and I was wondering how you all would handle this.

I promoted CAT6 for voice and data because they will have a hard ceiling in a majority of the office suite and IP phones within 6 months. I know that CAT5e will do fine for VoIP, but I went CAT6 on this project. In the mean time they will be using an Analog phones.

I have one 24 port patch panel for data and one 24 port patch panel for the voice.

How would you recommend patching the two voice lines to the 24 port voice patch panel?

I was thinking of coming out of the telco 66 block and looping it through the back of a 3rd patch panel then cross connecting it to the voice CAT6 patch panel.

Then when they go VoIp I would remove the 3rd patch panel.

What do you all think?

That would be the cleanest solution, or use 2-25 pair cables, 2 pairs per port, brought to a 66 block next to the telco block. Do your looping on the 66 block, that way you can also put oddball lines like the FAX on the patch panel.

If you're going CAT6 why distinguish at all between voice and data? Just wire the whole thing up 568B, all 48 ports. You could color code your jacks at the wall side, 1 color for data one color for voice but in reality they would all be the same. That way you could run all one color cable to one patch panel and another color to the other and make them more intuitive to work with. I like to do this myself and find it is a much easier sell to the customer even though CAT5 or 6 buys you nothing when it comes to phones. The flexibility is the selling point.

Now without a phone switch you want to share 2 lines with multipe phones. You can do this many ways, but if it were me I'd get a 110 block and make a simple bus bar with 2 busses, one for each line which you'll patch in from the 66M. Then make a patch cable for each phone port, RJ45 or RJ12 on one end, blue/white on the center 2 pins then terminate the other end at the 110 block.

[on edit]I almost forgot, the patch cord will use blue/white for line 1 and green/white for line 2. Blue goes into bus 1 and green into bus 2, crimp green and blue at the patch panel and break out the lines at the wall plate with a splitter or a lot of 2 line phones can handle a 2 pair connection in one plug. This is by far the cheaper way to go and you don't have to rip out anything later. Keep it 568B all the way and you'll be OK.

To keep it super neat, I'd use cable management rings to route the cables to the back of the cabinet then out a hole in the side that has been lined with a rubber grommet if not already so equipped. Zip ties to dress it all up when done.

Tommy I like the 25 pair idea

PMCook thanks for your reply too!

I would get a 24-port patch panel and wire a 25-pair CAT3 cable to it, one pair per each RJ45 jack and wrap the violet/slate pair. Then cross-connect with CAT5E patch cords. When you change to VoIP, you can still use the same patch cords to go to the voice/data switch, and the 25-pair PBX cable can go away.

B/E - that's what I said above, except notice he's using 2line phones-thus the 2 pairs per port!