Introduction to Copper Patch Panel

In the data center, it is very important to create a tidy cabling system. Copper patch panel, as a kind of flexible and effective copper cable management tool, gains popularity among data center users. Today, various types of copper patch panels can be found on the market, such as shielded or unshielded, flat or angled, etc. So how much do you know about them? This article will introduce different types of copper patch panels.

 

Overview of Copper Patch Panel

First, let’s have a brief overview of copper patch panel. A copper patch panel or patch bay is used in local area networks (LANs) as a mounted hardware assembly that contains ports to connect and manage incoming and outgoing Ethernet cables. The patch panels apply copper patch cords to create interconnection. Copper patch panels are designed for both shielded and unshielded copper cables like Cat 5e, Cat 6, Cat 6a and Cat7. And the configurations can be different from numbers of ports, such as 12-port, 24-port, 48-port, 96-port.

 

Copper Patch Panel Types
Shielded vs. Unshielded

We know that there are shielded and unshielded copper cables. In order to match with cable applications, copper patch panels are also designed into shielded and unshielded two types. It’s not difficult to understand that shielded patch panels are designed for high EMI (Electro Magnetic Interference) environments, where interference is a risk. This type of patch panel can protect your high speed network from noise and EMI especially when the copper cables run near power cables. In theory, cables should be used in pair with corresponding patch panel types. For example, Cat6 shielded cable should be used with Cat6 shielded patch panel jointly. However, in practical applications, few people follow this principle. So is it OK to use shielded cable with an unshielded patch panel?

When you plan to use unshielded patch panel for shielded cable, you should pay much attention to the environment in which your cable will run through. If no high power electrical wire is around the cable, you can go with unshielded patch panel; however, if the cable is surrounded by electric welding machine, high-power radio transmitters and other equipment with larger electromagnetic interference, then you’d better select shielded type. In addition, you may also have to consider the network speed. Both shielded and unshielded types can be used for 1G network, while only shielded type is proper for 10G network.

Flat vs. Angled

From the appearance, copper patch panels include two types: flat and angled. Flat patch panel helps horizontal cable manager to organize and route cables into vertical manager; angled patch panel allows cables to be routed from both sides of the patch panel, which eliminates the need of a horizontal cable manager and makes horizontal cables directly enter into the vertical manager. In comparison, angled patch panel is able to save more rack space and provide higher density cabling for conventional cable management systems. But angled patch panel is not generic for cabinet installation due to the front depth requirements. Here is a figure of flat and angled patch panel.

 

Common vs. High Density

Common patch panels are always designed in 8 or 12 ports configurations, while high density patch panels are available in flat and angled designs with 24 or 48 ports configurations. High density patch panel is suitable for installations with limited space and it’s a good choice for small home and office networks. With the increasing demand for bandwidth, high density patch panel is widely used in Fast Ethernet applications for saving rack space. So space is the first factor to be considered for making the decision between common and high density patch panels. Here is a figure of 24 port Cat5e patch panel.

 

Conclusion

Serving as the nerve center of the cabling network, copper patch panel is generally regarded as a critical component in the entire cabling systems. It is able to realize the connection, allocation and scheduling of cable links easily. FS.COM provides different kinds of copper patch panel, such as 48 port Cat5e patch panel, 24 port Cat6 patch panel, 48 port Cat6 patch panel, etc. 

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Comments: 46
  • #1

    Power Cables (Thursday, 21 December 2017 02:06)

    Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly that love and read more on this topic. If possible, such as gain knowledge, would you mind updating your blog with additional information? It is very useful for me.

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