You have selected the correct Rack (Wall-mount or Floor-standing), screwed it in place and the electrician has brought all the cables (Cat6a) from the house sockets into the cabin.
Now it's time to connect to the Switch (the Internet hub). This is where the most common and dangerous "crime" of amateur installers occurs: They take the thick cable coming from the wall, "press" a male plug (RJ45) on it with a pair of pliers, and nail it directly onto the Switch.
This practice is strictly prohibited on Structured Cabling. Proper networking requires the use of a Patch Panel. Let's see why "bulk" cables kill the network and how the Patch Panel works as the ultimate "shield" of your system.
To understand the problem, you have to look at the copper itself.
The cable that we throw into the walls (Installation Cable) has a Solid Core. Each of its 8 small wires is a single, thick piece of copper.
Solid copper is great for long distances, but it is stiff and brittle. It is not designed to bend. If you put a male plug on it and shake it 4-5 times left and right to clean the Rack, the copper inside the plug will "fatigue" and break.
Because these cables are very hard, if you nail them directly to the Switch, their natural tension will constantly pull on the device's socket, risking breaking the delicate circuit board of your expensive equipment.
The Patch Panel is a passive, 19-inch (1U or 2U) metal frame that screws into the Rack. It doesn't plug in, it doesn't have lights, it doesn't have a "brain" and it doesn't provide internet by itself. It works purely as a mechanical bridge.
The separation of the network is done in two stages:
The interpolation of this passive array offers enormous advantages that determine the viability of the network:
If you trip over a cable or pull it by mistake, only the cheap, flexible €2 Patch Cord will break. Your expensive Switch and permanent in-wall cable will remain completely intact.
Suppose Socket No. 5 (in the living room) was getting internet from the Switch. You decide that you now want this outlet to act as a line for the landline. If you had "bulk" cables, you'd have to cut and re-make plugs. With the Patch Panel, you simply remove the front patch cord from the Switch and pin it to the phone panel. 3 second process.
Each port on the Patch Panel has a number (eg 1 to 24) and a small white box. There you can write exactly where the cable goes (eg "Pool Camera" or "Living Room TV"). If you don't put in a Patch Panel, you'll end up with 24 identical wires dangling, trying to guess which is which.
In the past, Patch Panels required a special tool ("nailer") to push the wires onto their board (Punch-down technology). This was difficult, and if a port broke, you had to throw away the whole Panel.
Today, we exclusively use Unloaded Modular Keystone Patch Panels.
You buy an empty metal frame with 24 square holes. Then you terminate each wall wire to an individual "cube" (Keystone Jack). Finally, you take this cube and "snap" (click) it into the empty hole in the Panel.
If a port breaks, you only change that particular cube. Also, you can mix technologies! On the same Patch Panel you can snap together 5 Network Keystones (Cat6a), 2 Keystones for TV cables (Coaxial/F-Type), and 1 Keystone for optical fiber (LC).
The Patch Panel is the boundary that separates the static, unchanging architecture of the building (the cables in the walls) from the dynamic, ever-changing world of electronic devices (the Switch and the Router). It doesn't add speed to the network, but it adds order, reliability and security. A cab without a Patch Panel isn't a network, it's just a collection of wires waiting to break.
Next Step: We have the Patch Panel and the Switch. Now we need to join them using the Patch Cords. How are we going to do it without our cabin looking like... spaghetti?
We continue in the art of tidying up: Cable Management in the Rack: How to organize cables like a pro (Guides, Velcro, Ties, Patch cords of precise length).
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