Patch Panel Showdown: Keystone vs. Traditional in the Ultimate Structured Cabling Debate

Fresh out of the ring with COVID, I'm here to tell you that the fever may have broken, but the heat is still on in the latest podcast episode where we dissect the intricacies of structured cabling. The battle lines are drawn between keystone and traditional patch panels, and we're not pulling any punches. With a minor technical hiccup on TikTok that couldn't hold us back, we march on to share the knowledge that'll make or break your telecom room setups. And if you think you've heard it all, wait until you hear about ethernet running through bananas—Mike Pinocchi from Fluke joins the fray to talk about this unexpected twist that'll have you questioning the limits of your network cables.

This episode isn't just about the clash of patch panels; it's a treasure trove of insights from the front lines of network cabling. We're talking densities, rack units, and the strategic deployment of these unsung heroes in your cabling arsenal. Ever wondered about the finer points of cross-connection or the sleek sophistication that comes with proper wire management? We're laying it all out, clear as a freshly terminated cable. And while I might've forgotten the actual panels on the show, I didn't forget to arm you with the knowledge you need to make informed decisions in your own cabling conquests.

Join us for a session that's just as informative as it is interactive. From the logistical leg-ups of Keystone panels to the old-school charm of traditional patch panels, we're weighing the pros and cons, with my personal preferences and your experiences taking center stage. Wire management might be a recommendation, but in our book, it's a must for that neat, professional finish. So tune in, turn up the volume, and get ready to have your allegiances tested in this epic saga of patch panel supremacy. Mike and I can't wait to hear your take in the great debate that's more than just a matter of personal taste—it's about shaping the future of structured cabling.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Thursday night, 6 pm Eastern. Don't even try to pretend like you have another favorite RCD to. You know it's me, you know it's me. So yeah, thursday nights still getting over the old COVID things, still not feeling so hot I'm probably about 90% there, 95% there. Man, I tell you what it really knocked me down. Oh lord, I never been so sick in my life. I'm stuck because I still got the kind of suggest the science thing in back of my head here, stuff. But I'm functioning. I taught a class today, right.

Speaker 1: 0:52

So tonight show is a little bit different. I'm not doing questions tonight, but absolutely make sure that you put your questions in for next week show, right? So let me see who was in the house. Strikers in the house Hello, hello, hello. Anthony is in the house. Hello, anthony. And somebody says my video is mirrored. Yeah, I'm gonna get. I'm. I'm in a process of getting rid of restream and going solely with Riverside Once I can figure out the riverside. Kailin, I sent you a. You just text me back. Okay, let's talk after this live stream. Okay.

Speaker 1: 1:39

So tonight show. I was sitting there. I'm gonna hit myself. You know it's Thursday night, so you've got to do the acronym challenge, right, the acronym challenge. So tonight's acronym is let me pull it up, bump, bump, bump. I DC. What does that acronym mean? I DC, I'll give you a hit. Has something to do with the subject of tonight show. Take a sip of my zivius over there. I DC put it in the chat box. What does that acronym mean? Oh, it's Mr Steve gals. Hey, steve, so nobody want there. It is there. It is Darrell. The RCDD got it. Darrell says insulation, displacement, connector, although I think it means contact. But that's close enough for me. I DC. And, like I said, it has something to do with tonight's show.

Speaker 1: 2:39

Tonight show we're talking about. We're talking about the battle of the patch panels. Battle of the patch panels, which is better, keystone or traditional, right Keystone or traditional? Other people can hear me, john. I don't know why you can't hear me. Maybe it's your volume. Maybe I turn your volume up. Darrell Kailin, can you hear me over the six act feed? Let me know.

Speaker 1: 3:07

And I got the idea for this, the show for tonight because I see a lot of people arguing over this. Right, and that's what I said. I'm not only I need to do the battle of the patch panels, but I also need to kind of dive in on to what it is. What is a patch panel, and then also tie in wire managers. Oh, before I move on too much further, did you catch last week's show? Well, technically, isn't it this week?

Speaker 1: 3:39

So just Monday past I had a subject matter expert on. We talked about MPTL, modular plug, terminated links, mptl's so I had it from a connectivity manufacturer. I've had Steve Cowles on. We talked about MPTL's from a testing standpoint. I've talked about MPTL's myself, so I figured you know I'll have somebody come on and talk about MPTL's from a connectivity. Do they warranty it? Do they not warranty it? What are the options? Great conversation, great, great conversation.

Speaker 1: 4:12

Now next week's show is going to be even better. Right, even better because I have Mike Pinocchi on the show. Now, mike Pinocchi for those of you who don't know him, he's a trainer for Fluke and a couple other test platforms and he did a video. Well, no, he did a presentation that they video recorded and the title of it was you can't have wireless without spelling wire or in a 5G banana. And what they did was they actually they cut a cable in half and stuck the bear copper end into four bananas and actually ran ethernet over the bananas that's bananas. So I reached out to him because, like I said, mike's a good friend. I reached out to him, said Mike man, I gotta get you on the show. We gotta talk about that, that's cool. So we recorded that. See my TD Mem sitting right there. I forgot to put it away. Yeah so, yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:14

So next week's show we are. I don't know why the microphone's not working. It's working here, that's over the phone. I do not know why it's not working there. So I don't know. Tixxock is having problems tonight. You know there it is.

Speaker 1: 5:29

So he came on and we actually did some testing stuff about running ethernet over bananas and probably thinking well, what's the real world application there? The real world application is the difference between TIA testing limits and application limits. What does that mean? It's kind of a fancy thing there, right. So we all know that when you test your cable, you know we're testing it out. You know the crosstalks, you know wire mapping all the way out to 295 feet, because that's the TIA cable testing limits. But then when you start talking about, you know 100 megabit ethernet, one gig, ethernet, two and a half, five gig, 10 gig, 40 gig. You know ethernet's a little bit more resilient than that. Sometimes it will actually work even though you're failing test results, and that's kind of what that whole thing was about. So we got talking about that and the cool thing is he actually he's got one of these little digital microscope things. We also got in the subject of talking about MPTLs again. So it's a cool episode. Make sure that you watch it.

Speaker 1: 6:37

So tonight's show, like I said, is about patch. It's the battle of the patch panels. We'll save, you know, for those who may not know, you know I work in the structure cabling industries of voice and data cabling and I hear all the time well, you don't need patch panels. Yes, you do need patch panels. So I wanted to do a show about that. I really did. So. Tonight's show we're gonna start off with what are patch panels, what are the advantages of patch panels, what are the disadvantages of patch panels, and then I'm gonna get into which is better A traditional patch panel or a keystone patch panel. You know I forgot to grab my patch panels oh man, I knew I forgot something. And then we'll finish it out with a short conversation on wire management, wire management.

Speaker 1: 7:23

So let's go ahead and start talking about what is. What is a patch panel, right. So a patch panel it's really, it's an administration point, right, it's the way that you can interact, interconnect or cross connect that solid conductor permanently cable to a stranded conductor patch cord and, as you watched last week show, you understand that that patch cord is the disposable portion of it, right? So you see, the horizontal cable is terminated on that IDC field. That's why we had that acronym, idc, installation, displacement contact. That could be, for example, like a 66 block, 110 block, anything like that.

Speaker 1: 8:06

So a patch panel is gonna be some type of a termination field, idc termination field. It's mounted to a steel panel and then that accepts patch cords in the front. Right. Now, they come in various sizes and mounting platforms and mounting options. But the main purpose here for a patch panel is to provide a high density termination field. That's going to be reliable, it's going to be durable and there are times I've seen telecom rooms where people would literally terminate horizontal cables on biscuit jacks and then they run patch cords from that over. Okay, it's kind of funky and wonky, but you're not gonna get the density population that you will get with a patch panel and you're gonna find your patch panels in your common telecommunications spaces, like your telecommunications room, your equipment room.

Speaker 1: 9:01

Now, a lot of people when they think of patch panels, they generally think of the kind that mounted in the rack, like you see back there behind me, right, yes, there is rack mounted patch panels, right, and their rack mounted patch panels that fit both in 19 inch and 23 inch, two post racks and cabinets. Now, the most common rack is going to be the 19 inch rack, like my CPR rack back there. That's a 19 inch rack. That's what you find in most network spaces, but there is a 23 inch rack that you will come across from time to time and that 23 inch rack is gonna be found in a lot of your telco spaces. Hello, tony, good to see you, my friend. So the 23 inch racks, like I said, you'll find in your telco spaces and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 9:49

But you'll find that they make you can. You can mount a 19 inch panel into a 23 inch rack. I know it doesn't sound like you can, but you can't, because they make these little adapters that you can screw to the rail on a 23 inch rack. That brings it in enough so you can mount a 19 inch patch panel. But the 23 inch patch panels, like I said they're really for your telco stuff mounting your, you know, your, your telco equipment, stuff like that. They do make wall mounted patch panels. Right Now. They have all kinds of options when it comes to wall mounted patch panels. They really do. Now, the wall mounted patch panels, you can find the direct mounting kind. You can also find patch panels with integrated standoff legs.

Speaker 1: 10:34

And then there, and then probably I think the most common one type of wall mounted patch panel outside of mounting them in a rack, is on an 89 style mounting. So for those of you who may not know what 89 style means, it's a. It's the same bracket that you use to mount 66 blocks, right? So you can get one of those with a little little patch panel already on it. So you don't always need a big hunk and rack like that with with panels inside of it. And then you know what, if you've got a small little like veterinary office, whatever, that kind of a patch bracket, patch panel is probably going to be a bit of an overkill form. Ed, the old tech guys in the house, ed, how you doing my friend, good to see you. So that's probably a little bit of an overkill. So a lot of times for you, like your, your small businesses, your multiple dwelling units. That little type of patch panel mounted on the 89D bracket is going to be perfect for that. All right, so let's talk about. So that's the panel.

Speaker 1: 11:34

But on the backside of the panel, you know you're going to have different types of termination fields or IDCs. That's why the acronym for today was IDC, right? So the most common ones you're going to find are the patch panels with the 110s on the back, patch panels with Bix termination, patch panels with Krona terminations. And just keep in mind that whichever one that you get, you're going to need that specific tool, a 110 punch tool. While it looks similar to a Bix or a Krona, it's not going to terminate it. So you need that specific punch tool for that type of patch panel. There's, yeah, and a lot of people understand that the inside, the, the underneath, the termination field on that patch panel is a printed circuit board and that printed circuit board does things to the signal comp, does some compensation stuff, makes it perform a little bit better. You know, they also make you know, I just thought of this they also make patch panels with the old 50 pin telco connections on the back of it Right, and so that's really good.

Speaker 1: 12:35

Because you have a lot of people, a lot of businesses, that they don't want their voice terminated on 66 blocks or 110 blocks. They want to be able to administer their own, their own phone system themselves. And the easiest way to do that is with a rack with with ports on it. So you can take a port, you can plug it into the cable connects directly to the jack out there on the floor somewhere. So they make them with 50 pin telco. Some people might know them as amphanol connectors, some people call them. Well, actually amp champ is the tool it creates. So it's a it's a oblong thing. It's got 25 pairs inside of it and it just snaps into place. So then you can have like the switch tail coming out of the phone switch, plug it right into the back of that patch panel and now you've got, you know, the ports on the front. You literally just plug your patch cord into the port, plug it into the interconnection to the, to the horizontal cabling, and, boom, you can administer your phone that way. So a lot of people don't know that it's that's out there.

Speaker 1: 13:29

You also have the keystone patch panels, which we'll talk more about in a little bit, because that's what tonight shows about traditional versus the keystones. And then there's also the feed through type of patch panels. Now, of all those types of patch panels, to make it even more complex, you also have patch panels for shielded and patch panels for unshielded cable plants. All right, so just make sure that if you're doing the shielded cable plants, you install them for the manufacturing structures, because they're very specific. If you don't bond a shielded patch panel and the cable correctly, it will perform worse.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Now, patch panels are defined by the number of connectors that they have, and the most common types of patch panels are going to be 12 ports, 24 ports, 48 ports, even 96 ports. The little, the blue patch panels on the 89d brackets, like the six to six block brackets. Those are typically like six points, but there are other port numbers available. You can get a 16 port patch panel and a 32 port patch. I think I know what's going on with this. Now. Just hit me. It's kind of funny how that happens. Right, there we go. Stay tuned on the TicTac feed. If the mic sounds better because I just got to think it it might have been my headphones. My headphones might have still been plugged in. So let me know if you can hear me better now. So yeah, you have the 16 ports and the 32 ports.

Speaker 1: 14:50

Now, patch panels come in three different types of densities. Right, you have low density, you have medium density and you have high density. Your low density patch panels are gonna be, for example, for, like, if it's a one run, one rack mount unit patch panel. If it's low density, that's gonna be 12 or 16 ports. Right, rack mount units, let's talk about that.

Speaker 1: 15:19

What is a rack mount unit? When you look at the, the thickness of a patch man, how tall it is, if you divide that by 1.75, that'll tell me how many rack units it is. Or rack my units is. So the rack behind me back there, that's a 45 rack unit rack. So if I have one rack mount unit patch panels, I could put 45 of them in there. If I have two rack mount unit patch panels, then that's going to be half of that. Right, that'll be what. 22, right? So that's what they are. So the low density For you have 12 to 16 ports for one rack my unit.

Speaker 1: 15:56

If you have a two rack my unit, you're only gonna get 24 to 32 ports. And if you have a three rack my unit, which is a really big patch panel. You're only gonna get 48 ports out of it, the medium one, and this is where most patch panels that you buy or find available. They usually fall in the mediums right. So a medium density patch panel means you get 24 ports for every rack unit, 48 points for every two rack units, and then you have your high density patch panels. People shy away from high density patch panels because it's a lot of connectors in a small footprint and it makes it kind of hard, especially people with big hands like me, to get in there and plug things in and unplug things. But a high density patch panel basically means 48 ports for every rack mount unit.

Speaker 1: 16:46

Okay, now why would you use? Why would you use a patch panel? There's many reasons why you might want to use patch panels. You might want to use it for cross connection, interconnection, mutoas or consolidation points. Let's talk about each of those.

Speaker 1: 17:03

Cross connection what is people a lot of people confuse cross connection with interconnection. Right, cross connection means that you're connecting two patch panels together. So, for example, I might have I was talking about the telco switches where somebody will run a tail out of a telephone switch With a 25 pair cable with that 50 pin telco connector to snap it on the back of that patch panel. Then they'll run a patch cord because that represents your ports coming out of the phone switch. And then I want a patch cord from that to another patch panel where the horizontal cables are terminated to go to the phones out On the floor. That is a cross connection. When you're connecting two passive panels together, that's a cross connection. Okay, sorry, that's an interconnection, got that wrong. And. And a cross connection is. Think of it like in a telco in a in a room where you've got Horizontal cables coming in terminating and you got a riser cable terminating on a patch panel and you want to get the stuff to go down so you can use the connect between those two patchments. So cross connection is too passive. Interconnection is when you're crossing one Patch panel from your horizontal cabling to like your switches. So most common would be you've got 24-poor patch panel, you got your your Cisco switch and you run that patch cable from the switch to the Patch panel. That is a interconnection, interconnection, right.

Speaker 1: 18:27

You might also find patch panels in Mutolas, in multi user telecommunications outlet assembly. Find that a lot in your Modular furniture locations. So what they'll do is they'll mount a, take a wall, mount a bracket, terminate a patch panel on it somewhere close by the modular furniture and then they'll run passcords from that patch on the Mutewa to the actual phone or computer in that cluster of modular furniture. You're also going to find patch panels and consolidation points and horizontal cross connection points. Now let's talk about the advantages and the disadvantages. The advantages of using patch panels over using the Terminating on the you know surfinal blocks inside of a closet is you get higher density. You get higher density. That's an advantage. Another advantage is a patch panel is going to be the quickest and the easiest way to create that cross connection as interconnection, because it can be literally as simple as four screws to put up a hinged wall bracket and then screw your patch panel to it and start terminating. If you, if you're putting in 12 or 24 Terminations that you want to put into service on a box because you don't want to buy a patch panel, it's gonna take you a lot longer. So they're very easy to deploy and they're also very easy when it comes to labeling them and configuring them.

Speaker 1: 19:50

Now there are Disadvantages to patch panels. You know number one there. They're gonna be more expensive. It's gonna be more expensive than putting up those service mount blocks. But another disadvantage is the port, the very front of the port, where you plug the patch cord in. That's the weak point and that's why it's always you we're talking about wire managers here in a little bit. That's why I always recommend using you of wire managers, of course not wire managers, because the weakest point is again, we plug that patch cord in the front. So which is better, the traditional patch panel or the Keystone patch panel? Again, huge debate in our industry.

Speaker 1: 20:27

Tell us in the chat box, tell us in the feed, which is your favorite the Keystone or is it going to be the traditional patch panel? Tell us in the chat box which you prefer to use. I'll tell you mine here in just a minute so I can terminate both but which one actually meets codes and standards and best practices? The answer to that is neither, and you'll find that the preference over traditional versus the Keystone patch panels is usually highly dependent on the opinion of the actual installer. Now, customers will choose one over the other for reasons we'll talk about here in a minute. But you'll find technicians who absolutely prefer doing the traditional patch panels. Other technicians who prefer doing the Keystone, where you terminate the jack and then you plug the jack into that open port. Right Now the codes are silent on this. Remember the codes is for safety, not for performance, and the standards and the best practices they allow us to use both right.

Speaker 1: 21:28

So here's my thoughts. For a traditional patch panel, it beats out on ease of installation because I think it's easier to terminate. On a 110 traditional patch panel, I just do I really do Again, that's based on my experience terminating patch panels, stuff like that. Now some may be more comfortable terminating Keystone patch panels because that's all they've ever done, but for me I think terminating a traditional patch panel is easier. The traditional patch panels to me are a little bit more durable and making them more suitable for high traffic environments right. And you can get a lot more ports in a small spot. With the Keystone patch panels you're not gonna get a 96 port configuration for your high density, it's just not.

Speaker 1: 22:10

But there are disadvantages to those traditional patch panels and if a port goes bad on one of those types of patch panels which is rare, which is rare some people will replace the whole entire patch panel. That's costly because you got 24 cables terminated on it, 48 cables terminated on it. So you gotta tear those all off, replace it terminating and then test them again. But some of the traditional patch panels you don't have to replace the entire patch panel, you can, literally. If you actually look at the backside of a patch panel, the termination field is usually six ports. You can unscrew those six ports, get a new one from the manufacturer, unscrew those six ports. Now you only have to re-terminate six instead of doing the whole entire panel.

Speaker 1: 22:59

Now let's talk about the Keystone patch panels. Right, again, tell me in the chat box whether you are a Keystone fan or a traditional patch panel fan. So the Keystone patch panels they offer a lot of flexibility, right? You know, if I got a job where I'm running Cat5E, cat6, cat6a, I'm gonna need three different types of patch panels. If I'm using the Keystone patch panels, I could put those three different types of cables all on the same patch panel. I can also color code those ports, right? Can't do that with a traditional. So it makes the Keystone patch panels are really good at doing it. And you can put HDMI cables, usb cables, f connectors there's all different kinds of stuff that you can put on there, on the Keystone panels, right, and you can also use them for administration. Well, administration, you know, there's a lot, of, a lot of installers out there now that they'll buy the Keystone panels. Because here's the beautiful thing if you have a customer that are only putting in eight or 10 computers, if you buy 24 port patch panel, you're buying all 24 ports right.

Speaker 1: 24:08

If you buy a Keystone patch panel you're paying for the base cost of the patch panel plus only the jacks that you need. So it can be a little bit cheaper option. And what a lot of technicians will do is to keep with the Keystone patch panels. When you look at some of your switches sometimes they'll cluster all of the APHC connectors on the switch all, like you know, together. Well, a 24 port panel, those big drops are gonna go all the way across. Well, with the Keystones you can have them terminate right in the center so you can have real short patchboards going into that switch. That's another advantage. And you can color code them, because if you've got cables for computers and then maybe some cables going to some wireless access points, you can color the wireless access points with a different color jack and that way the customer knows when they look at it. Well, that's, since that one is orange, that must be the wireless access point. So the the benefit there for the keystone is they can be easily swapped out if you have a problem I talked about. If you have a bad patch panel for the traditional style, you can either replace the whole tire panel or just pop out that little six port main of the six port module and replace that With the keystone patch panels. All you got to do is just pop out that one jack and you probably got a bunch of jacks in your truck. Just take one of the jacks out your truck, terminate it, stick it back in with that six port module. You're probably gonna have to reach out to the manufacturer and have them send you a new one and that's gonna be all. That's gonna take time, right, and the keystone patch panels? They offer aesthetics. So really what it bulls down to is they're both great patch panels, they're both great patch panels. It really depends, you know, how do you? Which do you prefer? So Ed says keystones are more forgivable for mistakes. You have to expand on that, ed, I'm, you know I'm. I Think the traditional ones are better. Hey, look at that John Bowser's in the house. Mr John Bowser, one of my, one of my best friends there. How you doing, buddy? Good to see you. I can't wait to come to Philly so you and I can hang out again some more.

Speaker 1: 26:11

Now that we talked about the keystone patch panels and the traditional patch panels, another one you hear is wire managers. Do you need to have wire manager? There's a huge thing going on over the last 10 years or so where Technicians will put in a switch, a patch panel, switch a patch panel and then they get away from using horizontal wire managers. Right, and Some people will argue with them and say, well, you got to put in the horizontal wire manager because it's required by standards. Words have meanings. You got to pay attention to the words that are printed on the page. It's not a shell, it's a recommendation that you should use patch cord management. Now, I think you should use them and if I were writing standards I would change that to a shell. But you really need to think about using but they're not. Again, it's a recommendation, not a requirement, and I get it. You know some people say, well, I don't want to use wire managers because the customer doesn't want to pay for them.

Speaker 1: 27:07

Wire managers, they do a couple of things. They have a couple functions. One they're gonna help you organize and route the patch cords neatly and they're going to help reduce the chance of this patch Chords getting tangled. If you watch next Monday show, next Monday show with Mike Pinocchi, we have to. We have a tester there. He takes a patch cord and he just kind of starts kind of hope. You know bending the patch cord and you can literally see it drop packets Right. Well, the patch cord, the wire managers help, does that what? The wire managers also help maintain the proper bend radiuses for your patch Chords, which is going to help that patch core perform the way that it's supposed to.

Speaker 1: 27:45

And the best, the best thing is Air flow management. You know, when you have patch panel switch, patch panel switch, patch panel switch, if you're the service tech and you got to replace one of those cables in the middle, well, you have to go behind the switch and the switches are 20 inches deep, 22 inches deep, sometimes 24 inches deep. You got to reach between two switches and if it's a one, are you panel, that's, that's a hair less than two inches. You got to reach between them but y'all, they never go by. Yes, they do, yes, they do. So you know putting in the wire manager and it helps spread those switches apart. That helps with air management and and it helps that somebody says if you use six inch patch chords, why would you need wire management? Watch next week's video and you'll see why.

Speaker 1: 28:34

Because we're gonna talk about that. Right, because If anybody bumps those past panel of patch chords and they're, they're, they're coming out. There's a chance that they can affect the performance. Now again, it's a minimal chance, but you know I'm just talking about what the standards say. So, but I get it and I do think those types of management, those type of installs are pretty, they absolutely pretty. So the ANSI standards, while they don't explicitly Mandate the use of wire managers, it is a highly recommended best practice in founding the standards and also the the best practice itself. But you know, with standards, the thing you gotta remember is they are voluntary, voluntary. You don't necessarily have to follow the standards, right?

Speaker 1: 29:16

Tom's in the house, tommy, how you doing my friend? He says, uh, hello, I was a patch panel fan now and I do like doing the patch panels because of the flexibility and I get that, the keystone patch panels and you have so many more options with them that it makes it way easier, way, way, way easier. I do have some keystone patch panels here. Thank you, mr Steve. I got something in my rack over there. I got some down a desk underneath me and there's my watch. So it must be 630. So we're going to cut this short because mama's got pork chops out there waiting for me. So it's time for pork chop dinners. So until next time, everybody remember this Knowledge is power. Take care.

Speaker 2: 29:59

That's it for this episode of today's podcast. We hope you were able to learn something. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future content. Also, leave a rating so we can help even more people learn about telecommunications. Until next time, be safe.