LAN In A Box - Pt3

Well it's about time I do an update to the blog, and the biggest project of recent times has still been LAN in a Box. So here's part three!

At the back of the box is a mount for a patch panel. Normally I wouldn't bother with this, but there's always a chance that a cable could get snagged on something, or pulled sharply which *may* however unlikely it could be, damage the port on the switch. As the switch was generously donated to the project I really don't want to damage it as getting a replacement would be incredibly hard (to pay for more than anything). With with the cables always connected the switch also doesn't have much wear on the ports with cables being plugged/unplugged all the time.

The patch panel will just link into the ports and transpose them up to the top to where the cables reels are stored.

With that in place the back gets cut to fit to close off the rear of the panel.

To fix the panel in, recessed nuts on bolts fed from the rear make fixed studs to bolt the panel onto, and it's nicely held in place.

So far so good. The reels fit in the top in front of the panel behind the lip and there's plenty of space for the rest of the bits.

the test weekend was pretty good, although it wasn't fully patched due to a few problems with tools (lost my punch down tool, oops). Will update this again soon with more of the details of LIAB, and perhaps some other things.