- All right, let's quickly describe
a couple more ethernet-based devices and their technology.
First is the patch panel, patch panel is a physical device
that you connect the cables to for the computers.
It's the longer runs of cables,
you know, say from the server room
out to the jacks in a particular company.
And for example, you might see a patch panel like this,
and it has lots of RJ45 ports on the front.
This is a 24 port patch panel.
And I'll use something like this
from TRENDnet, or Leviton, or several other companies.
You want to have something nowadays that's Cat 6
or higher so you can take advantage
of gigabit speeds and even 10 gigabit speeds over copper.
So that's just one example of that.
You connect to the patch panel by way of punch downs.
You punch down all the wires here on the back.
So, you know, you have the ports on the front
and those connect to your switches
to allow connectivity between computers, but each wire...
each cable I should say is punched down on the back.
And this is one of the installs that I did.
There's eight wires for each cable.
So you can imagine there's a lot
of punch downs that you're gonna do.
And then, these cables go out through the physical plant,
through the ceiling, and through the walls,
and conduit 'til they get to their final destination,
which is gonna be either a surface mount RJ45 jack,
or it's gonna be something in the floor,
or in the ceiling, or in the cubicle.
It depends where the installation goes.
And generally, when I do the install,
I'll use blue for the RJ45 jacks,
and I'll usually run telco as well,
and I use white for that, those are RJ11.
So that's an example of the patch panel.
The patch panel and the jacks are part
of the permanent physical plant.
And that's not going anywhere.
Then, to connect your computer,
you use a patch cable from here to the computer.
If you're doing it wired, that is.
And that is the temporary connection, so to speak.
So what we're talking about here
is the permanent physical plant
from the jack on the wall all the way
to the server room at that patch panel.
Another device is the repeater.
A repeater can help you to repeat the signal over copper.
Copper signals can be sent 100 meters,
or 328 feet when you're using twisted pair cable,
which is the most common, but sometimes that's not enough.
Sometimes you need to repeat the signal.
If you have a powered repeater, you can do that.
You can increase the signal by almost two times,
but if you're using something passive,
any type of passive device for repeating,
or splitting you have to be careful with that
because that may cut the signal in half
as far as the distance it can go.
So you could use anything for a repeater.
They have simple one port repeaters,
or you could use a regular four port switch,
which is what a lot of people do.
And finally power over ethernet, awesome technology.
It's the IEEE802.3af Standard.
And what this means is devices can not only get
their data over the network cable,
they'll get their power from that as well
as long as the device is compliant.
And so, you know, you can get devices
in areas that have no power, but they can still work.
And one example of this would be the power injector.
This is pretty cool, let's say you wanna install a camera,
or a wireless access point in an area
where there's no power line, and there's no outlet.
Maybe it's outside, maybe it's on the ceiling
somewhere in the middle of the building.
Well, what you could do is you would take this device
and put this by your router,
and just use a short patch cable
to connect one of the ports on the router to this,
or one of the ports on the switch to this.
And then, this device will take care
of the power over ethernet.
This plugs into the wall and it generates power.
And it sends that power out through the other side,
another RJ45 port, and it sends the power,
and the data signal out to the device.
And all you have to do, at this point,
is run a twisted pair cable.
You may wanna use shielded cable
to shield it from interference but...
or shield other cables that might be near it
from the interference that may be generated by this cable.
Be careful when it comes to power over ethernet, or POE.
You never know what kind of code
there may be in your town or municipality.
An electrician may be required, it may not.
So you always want to check with your local ordinance
before you do any work when it comes to power over ethernet.
But this way you can just run a network cable out
to wherever it is that you want the device to be.
If you want, you know, let's say in your house
you want a wireless access point,
or a camera by your deck by the back door.
Then, you can just run the network cable
instead of having to run an electric line,
which is a lot more trouble.
And so, this is great for the company as well.
You might wanna have cameras outside
in the perimeter of the building,
or maybe inside or wireless access points.
And, you know, these things the best place
to put 'em is up on the ceiling.
And there usually isn't any outlets up there.
So this is a great way to do that.
You use the 802.3af Standard
to send power over the ethernet line.
So there's a couple things you wanna know:
ethernet-based devices, patch panels, the RJ45 jacks,
repeaters, and power over ethernet devices.
Check some of those out online,
check out some of the products that are available to you.
And that's about it for this sub lesson.