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Budget wired network


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Suggestions for a non tech savvy handy man please.

My small charity has a new satellite office, basically a shop on a town High St. It's for 8/10 folk who will each have a desk and PC using remote access to the main server in the head office 20 miles away.

To save costs I've agreed with the IT guys to cable up the office myself.

Options are

1. Buy 10m data cables with plugs (the little plastic bit on the end) and run these from a switch to each location. Easy peasy to do if a tad untidy. I can easily clip the cable to the skirting. Actually not skirting but a small boxed in section run along the walls hiding the radiator pipes. It's about 200mm square profile and formed in plywood so I can clip the cable to the top surface.

2. Buy a roll of cable and work out how to terminate it at each end to the appropriate plug. It there a tool for this. Visions of spaghetti hell and fiddly work for my sausage fingers.

3. Surface mount data sockets and run the cable back to the switch/router.

4. Mixture of above.

Any advice and suggestions welcome. Is there an easy to use switch cabinet that doesn't cost the earth?

Thanks

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To be honest if you can just run 10m extension cables from the switch to each PC, then that is by far the simplest solution.

Otherwise you will have to run the cable from the switch to each PC and put a small patch panel on the switch end and a socket at each PC end.  much easier to punch down into a socket/patch panel than wire pluhs and then use short patch cables at each end. 

As for the switch cabinet, what is the switch being used? (19" rack mount, there must be some sort of link equipment also)  If it is 19" then it should be in a rack and you can just add a 19" patch panel (not that expensive)

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I would go for 1) and buy some spares.

 

To reduce lots of long runs, you could use some 4 port hubs to cluster devices together, but this will add a little cost (they're about £20 each).

 

Our electrician wired cat 6 direct to wall plates and back to a patch panel, he did have a special tool and tested each connection. He did not apply plugs to the end of the Cat 6.

 

I still needed to buy patch cables (small cat 6 cables with plug either end) to make connections from the panel to the switch and obv. between devices and the wall plates.

 

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Option 1....

 

But do a bit of measuring first ..!! Cat5 patch cables come in various lengths so you may find a mix of 5/7.5/10m may be better. 

 

Alternate and even easier is to make each bank of desks a group and put a 4 port unmanaged switch on each desk then it’s one main cable back to the router

Edited by PeterW
Crossed with Bitpipe who had the same idea !
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I would ask the IT guys what they want you to do. They will have to maintain it.

 

You may not need a patch cabinet, just a router with lot of ports to plug into. If there are 8-10 people I would go for one with 16 ports allowing for printers etc.

 

Whatever you do I suggest using a proper cable marking system to number both ends of the cables.

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Why not go for WiFi, gives you good flexibility and commercial kit is pretty robust.  Easy to take with you and reuse somewhere else if the office gets closed down. to

A lot of it also depends on the hardware setup.  If you are going for up to 10 desktop PCs, that is a lot of heat being generated, and a lot of noise.

Why not laptops with better monitors, keyboards and mice.  Or, and I am not sure of the proper term, but thin clients or dumb terminals.  Everything seems to be going via the cloud these days.

Edited by SteamyTea
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