It seems that as we travel from network to network, we find many different rack
configurations, all based on personal preference. This is a result of current day products
that don’t work no matter how you arrange your racks and cabinets. As we stated earlier,
current horizontal management doesn’t manage anything except to get you out of your
switch or patch panel and dumps your excess cables into a vertical manager. After several
rows of this, the vertical manager is full and excess rows are intermixed. The end result is
a mess that you can barely get the cover on let alone sort or trace. Sound familiar?
The 48 Port Cycle
Everything in our lives is based on a cycle. Some cycles are complex, but all are based on
constants that we can rely on. The same holds true for rack installations. No matter how
we arrange our systems, we cycle over and over based on personal preference. I’d like to
note several constants within all rack systems. Every patch panel, no matter how many
ports are in the whole unit, break down into rows of 24. Every switch port count, no
matter how many overall switch ports, is divisible by 24. That gives us a common
denominator, or a constant. Every data rack is 19 inches wide. Now, based on these
constants, we have all we need to create a cycle of our own that is simple and yet reliable.
The industry offers 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, etc. foot lengths in patch cables. 1 footers are too short
to reach across a 19” rack, 3 footers leave too much excess, but what about a 2 footer?
The 2 foot patch cable sensibly reaches across the rack and leaves just enough slack to
form one precious coil of bend radius protection. So, it stands to reason, that if we create
a 24 port cycle of patch panel, 2 foot patch cable, and switch, we’ll have a great start to a
neat network.
