Tips on Cabling

Hi All
I am going to perform my first install in about a months time and just going through the planning now. I am planning to run all the CAT5 cables to the switches and other peripheral CBUS stuff from 2 sites and not daisy link them. The thing that I'm stuck on is how I connect about 24 CAT5 cables together on the plant room end? I could do it by a RJ45 patch panels but none of them that I have seen have any power ratings on them, so I have no idea is they are rated up to 2A, plus its a slightly messy.

 

distribution

I would ask your reasoning to not want to daisy chain. But you will usually require some form of star distribution, so I used Krone blocks marked A COMMON B COMMON. Each block has 4 rails of 10 punchs each, so when using 2 pairs each cable, this allows 10 cable connections. You could use three of these and you can also get small brackets to hold the blocks. Also be sure to use the proper c-bus pink cable.

 

My suggestion is to definitely daisy chain the network where practical.

The method specified in CBus installation guides of twisting and boot lacing at input units is going to be mechanically far superior to punch down connections back at a central location.
It is also going to use much less cable.

Follow the installation instructions and use the IDC to RJ45 recommended by Clipsal within the switchboard if ends up there is multiple CBus cables coming in.
The part number escapes me right now.

Document the CBus wiring layout so that it is possible to fault find in the future.

 

I was thinking of krone blocks as my background is the broadcast TV sector so I'm well uses to them. Half of my training was done by the BBC, who massively steer you away from Daisy chaining signals as one brake in a cable can knock out an entire network. What I'm planning is to ran a CBUS cat5 to each room, then daisy chain to each CBUS point in that room, so a 1/2 way between star and daisy chain config as per the manual. I'm now thinking of patch panels as I'm anally tidy and it will not have a mass of cable bunch at the side of the krone block. Signal quality should not be a massive problem as it is a star config, so signal degradation is limited to that one path rather than collective degradation over multiple connections.

 

Think there was some 10in wide patch panels for telephony that had all pairs commoned, such as used in Home Hubs

 

I created 6 daisy chain groups and joined them together using a Clipsal 8052/4RJSMB patch panel (shallow mounting bracket). The panel consists of 8 sockets divided into two groups which are commoned together. The two groups are joined to form a star point with 8 sockets. The advantage is that if you are trying to locate a cable fault each of the daisy chain groups can be unplugged in turn to aid the fault location process. This arrangement has been in place for 8 years with no problems.

 

To me the advantage of daisy chaining the network is that you can make a ring arrangement where one end is left not connected.
If there is some cabling damaged which is not accessible then the damaged section could be disconnected and fed from the other end.

If the CBus cable is crushed and shorted it is going to take both arrangements down.
If the CBus cable is cut and not shorted then the star arrangement could be a little simpler to fault find.
In my opinion twisted and boot laced is going to be a more reliable connection than IDC or RJ45.

Either way doesn't matter and the main thing is to properly document the layout to simplify fault finding.
With proper cable installation and termination you will be unlikely to ever have any cable problems at all.
Except from rodents which are best kept at bay in general.