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Question

Broadband Source into Patch Panel?

Mar 10, 2016 7:35AM PST

Hi everyone,

I have an AV rack that has a 24 port smart switch and a 24 port patch panel. I have a wireless router that will be plugged into the switch to then feed connections to the various rooms in our house.

I have a Cat5e cable coming from our broadband dish outside of the house. That dish connects to a tower about 2 miles away from our house. That Cat5 cable coming into the house I know normally would go into the "Internet" port on the router and then a cable will go from the router to the switch but the question is; I was just going to run that cable to the router but before I finish my punch downs on the patch panel, can it go into the patch panel and then to the router or does it need to go directly to the router and bypass the patch panel. I know the patch panel is just a dumb device so in my mind I should be able to just bridge the connection to the router using the patch panel which would keep my connections cleaner but wanted to check first before I punched it down.

Thanks for any input.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
I have never done that. But why?
Mar 10, 2016 8:28AM PST

Why? Because adding more connections reduces reliability. Since the feed connection has only one place to go, it gets a direct and highly reliable connection to the one place it needs to go. We use patch panels when we need to easily rejigger the connections.

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Solid wire
Mar 10, 2016 12:20PM PST

Makes sense, I used solid cat5e cable in the walls including the connection out to the dish so I was worried about plugging it directly into the router which may get moved from time to time. That's why I did the patch panel so not to stress the in wall wires. I can get it directly into the router though which makes sense for reliability reasons.