Home Networking- what is this panel?

Doc Holliday

Ok so I'm leasing a place that has home networking. Hooray. In a closet is a bunch of home automation stuff in one panel, and some ethernet and coax stuff in the other. I spliced the coax cable, patched it to my cable modem, ran the cable modem out to my router. So far so good.

However, I'd like to run ethernet to the living room, which has an ethernet drop in it (in fact every room has a couple). I assume all ethernet in the house is running to this panel but I have no idea what it is or how to make use of it. It looks like a patch panel without any female connectors :



So what is this and how do I network my home?

Note : that white cable you see runs straight through and doesn't connect to that panel. I crimped the end for the heck of it and have no idea where it leads to-- it's just labeled "ethernet".

Zxerol

That's your typical 110 punchdown block. You can punch in patch cable from the block (it's already nicely color-coded for you, so there's no wrangling about wire order) to a patch panel -- preferably on a rack -- or terminate the patch cable with an 8P8C and take it directly into a switch, or whatever the hell else you want to do with your wiring. You'll need to procure a punchdown tool to work (reliably) with this sucker, although I've used a narrow flat-headed screwdriver in a pinch before.

1ddqd

Think of it like a router, but without little plugs to make things easy for you.

Doc Holliday

Thanks both of you for the help!

So if I just need to feed my router into one of these, I can just buy a cat5, wire it to the right panel, terminate with 8p8c on the other end, and hook it into the router? Since I'm leasing I'm not sure I want to throw the money into a proper patch panel.

I'll have to figure out how this punchdown block works. Looks tedious... heh.