[SOLVED] Patch Panel Help

[benmills45]

Hi everyone hope you're all well.
The company i work for had a patch panel installed but the ethernet ports in our conference room don't work.
On the patch panel, the ports numbered 1-16 are labelled - analogue, digital and telephone exit. why does this mean?
We have ports 1-14 in our conference room but can't get internet in there using ethernet , can someone help?
We have a ' excel cat5e panel ' see photo here with labelling - https://ibb.co/1LpwPCx
All of this was installed before i started working here and nobody is sure what was installed.
Thanks,
Ben

 

[bill001g]

On the patch panel end you must plug a cable between one of the ports and some switch or router that has access to the network. You then plug a device into a port hopefully with the same number in the conference room.

A patch panel is nothing special. It is just a long ethernet cable running through the walls. You need to treat it exactly as if you ran the cable across the floor and had to use those couplers rather than a patch panel to make longer cables.

 

[benmills45]

Hi thanks for the reply. Yes we do use a switch as all the ports on our router are in use but we still have no luck. The switch 100% works as we have 2/3 devices running off the switch and never had problems. I have a feeling that the room itself doesn't have ethernet, but find it weird how the ports in the conference room are labelled.

 

[bill001g]

The panel you show only has 1 cable connected. Only that port will function.

It appears a attempt was made to label this well. You would think both ends were labeled by the same person it is just a matter of finding the jacks. Conference rooms sometime have patch panels/switches mounted under the table.

 

[Ralston18]

Might be interesting to look behind that patch panel to see what wires types and wire pairs are actually punched in for each port.

Do the same for other patch panels and wall outlets.

Check for labeling and start sketching out a physical map of the network. Use a copy of the building floor plan if possible.

Maybe there is some documentation stashed away somewhere that could help make some sense of it all.

 

[gggplaya]

Only port 7 is connected to anything. You need to add a network switch to that rack and connect all those ports to the switch.

You can think of a patch panel as another wall outlet. Instead of having just 1-2 ports on the outlet, a patch panel gives you an organized way to have 20 outlets in your case.