Wiring Details

Typical 110 "keystone" jacks with faceplates, surface blocks and tools. The little yellow tool and small cutters is all you really need. Faceplates come 1 to 6 port. Jacks are available for Cat-5 8-pin, Cat-3 6-pin, CATV Coax, BNC Coax, etc.

A 110 wiring frame with one position cabled. The little yellow tool will punch down to the top of the 110 block, but to punch the blocks down into the frame, you need something more violent. The punchdown tool is really nice, but costs between $40 and $120 U.S. depending on where you get it. The hammer will do the job if you don't do a lot of this.

Closeup of a 110 block termination. Note that the premise wiring comes up at the ends and fans out from the center tray. Backboard wiring comes in from the sides so it will not obscure the snap-in title bar that covers the center. Backboard wiring is easy to pull and replace, but pulling a block is like pulling teeth. Fortunately, you should almost never need to pull a block as the premise side is generally permanent.

A 66M block on stand. These are used for telephone backboard termination but can work with Cat-5 100BaseT (but I don't think they're really certified for that). 66M blocks come in "split" and "solid". The split block accomodates 50 incoming pairs (25 on each side) connected to 50 outgoing pairs. The solid block allows 25 incoming pairs to be connected to as many three outgoing pairs each. You can only punch one wire per clip, so fan-out on a split block requires "weaving" a wire over multiple clips.

We used to use a version with 12 RJ45 jacks (mounted 3 to each of those rectangular openings you see in the base) for 10BaseT networking. They still worked fine when we converted those cleints to 100BaseT, but they weren't certified for that.

A newer 66M format device is a 12-port patch block with RJ45 jacks on the face and 110 punchdown terminations on the back side. It clips into the standard 66M base. these are more compact than a patch pannel for small installations and can cost less (depending on where you buy your stuff). One is shown here below a standard 24-port patch panel.

The absolutely essential tools: tone generator and tracer. The generator puts a tone on a wire pair at the workstation end so you can find the other end with the tracer when there is no numbering or when the numbering is untrustworthy (that's about 97% of all wiring plants). The tracer doesn't have to touch the wire to find the tone, so you can locate a specific cable in a bundle.

A 110 backboard with some terminations using 110 jacks (the blue things). These are not as secure as we'd like, and punched down wiring is so easy to pull and move we don't recommend jacks for most installations.

This installation uses 3 110 frames so it has a capacity of 36 4-pair cables.

A small office backboard at Automation Access with telephone KSU, 12-port network hub and Cayman router for DSL access.

All premise wiring is identical (phone & network) and all terminates at two 110 frames with a cable mangement tray above them. Incoming telephone lines and fan-out to multiple destinations is on the 66M block to the right. The KSU feeds the 66M block to the left through a 25-pair "telco" connector.

The small office backboard at Marina Yamaha with network hub and DSL router/firewall. All cables terminate at a 110 frame with cable management tray below it.

The loop all the wire comes in through is called a "D Ring", and the item it wraps over is called a "Distribution Mushroom", or just plain "Mushroom".

The backboard at Cal Adventist Federal Credit Union. Here premise wiring terminates in a 48-port patch pannel. The 110 frame below it interfaces a few telephone lines to the telephone backboard at the other end of the building.

We recently completely rewired this building to allow transition from all serial devices to networked terminals using telnet. On the shelves (from top) are a Cisco manged network hub, Cisco access router with 16 serial ports, box of spare connectors, Motorola DSU/CSU, Digi 16 port expansion unit, Digi 16-port terminal server. The Digi boxes will eventually go away, replace by a network hub.

The computer is 2000 miles away. All the terminals, PCs and printers at this facility communicate with it through this backboard and a single HDSL (high speed DSL) connection. It's that lone wire draped across the bottom of the backboard.