Upgraded network. Rack and Patch panel installation.

Whoever ran the wiring in this office did us a major favor. They had run CAT5 wires home run for each voice run. Each desk had 3 CAT5 wires run to it. 1 was for DATA, and the other 2 were for Voice.

We needed to add 3 CAT5 jacks to each desk, and eliminate the voice jacks completely, since they were converting over to VoIP. Each desk has 2 VoIP phones and a computer. We wanted each phone and computer to have its own individual jack, and to provide power to the phones with a PoE switch.

This is what their network looked like when we got started.  

I converted all of the old analog jacks over to data jacks. All of the wiring was home run, and was all CAT5, so this meant nothing more than just replacing the jacks at the end of the wires, and connecting it to a patch panel.

I installed a rack, added a 2nd patch panel. Put in a shelf in the new rack, and connected up all of the network equipment.

The completed product.

The customer is more than happy with the end result, and has even took additional photos of his new network and emailed them to my boss. I however would have liked to have cleaned up the blue CAT5 wires a little better. The blue CAT5 wires are the data jacks for the computers, for their existing network. 

But this was all done with minimal down time for their network. There were several hiccups where the network was inadvertently disconnected for several seconds due to the previous mess that had to be organized, but all in all everything is up and running solid now. 

A dual WAN router was installed, providing internet from FiOS as well as a cable modem. The phones are running on the cable modem, while the PCs are running on the FiOS - with auto fail over, so if one internet goes down, the other will pick up the slack for phones and PCs. 

A PoE switch was installed for the VoIP phones.

Due to the customers request, this is not a standard 18 inch deep rack, it is a 12 inch deep rack. The customer did not want a rack that stuck out past the furniture below it, because he may want to install a cabinet or place furniture beside it to conceal it better, but with such a beautiful network he may want to show it off now.