Newbie: how to organize cables on a patch panel?

I'm wiring up my office. We've got 16 workstations, two jacks per. I've run cat 6 cable to a central wiring hub, and need to punch down everything into a 48 port patch panel.

The trouble is, I've started, and the back of the panel looks like a mess. It's not clear to me how best to run the cable so it's nice and neat. There really isn't enough room between the rows of punchdown positions to run all the cables, which means they have to stack on top of one another somehow and tied with cable wraps. Should they all run to the right or left? Should they all just go straight down? What do I tie them to?

Plus I've got a huge loop of extra cable. I don't want to cut it in case the rack needs to move a few feet this way or that. What to do with it?

It would be great if someone could post a link to a picture of one or more patch panels that have been wired correctly.

Reply to
Chris
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This is an endless argument. I personally prefer to have interleaved patch panels and switches, especially with stacking switches. Some others prefer racks of patch panels interleaved with racks of switches. The issue is whether one can assume that most patch panel sockets just can be wired straight to some switch port, or whether which socket goes to which port matters.

However as to interleaved patch panels and switches someone has thought it through and introduced a horizontal cable management system that looks quite attractive:

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Before and after:

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Interesting white paper and in particular page 23:

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Reply to
Peter Grandi

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