Friday, January 05, 2007

Surface Mount Boxes and Wall Plates

How Do You Create Modular Ports for Your Users to Plug Into? (customerservice@L-com.com)

Undoubtedly, one of the most important technological advances of our time is the modular network. Networked together, machines throughout an office, a building, a whole country, or all over the world can all communicate. In order to make a network user friendly, it's a good idea to provide easily accessible ports or jacks where your users' machines are.

Traditionally, there are two main ways of mounting modular jacks: in a wall or in a box mounted on a surface. By far, wall plates and face plates are the most popular way to go. With them, the jacks are flush with the wall, out of the way, but still easy to get to. But in some cases there are either no walls close by, or the walls cannot have anything running inside them. In those cases, surface mount boxes provide a perfect solution.

Boxes and face plates often come separate from the jack itself, allowing you to mix and match the correct jack with the correct mounting medium. Make sure you get a plate with the proper hole size already in it so you can easily mount the jack. The most common hole size is called Keystone, and though it is not standardized it is roughly the same from company to company.

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