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The main reason for a comms cabinet is neatness. Most data networking cabinets have standard 19 inch mounting rails in them designed for equipment and patch panels that are 19 inch rack compliant. (Data networking and telecomms is not their only use - for example a lot of contemporary "electric" musicians outboard gear is 19 inch rack compliant.)
So one can (mostly) assume that any such cabs have "standard" 19 inch rails inside and you usually buy them some number of "U's" high (if I ever knew what "U" stood for, I've forgotten, but I'd guess at "unit"): Rack mountable equipment will be some multiple of "U's" high and one would procure a comms cab with enough U's capacity for the amount of gear you want to install in it. "Little" cabs for a SOHO would probably be 6U, 9U or 12U. Big floor standers for a data centre would be 42U!
But beyond the "standard" sizing of the mounting rails, everything else is up for grabs - internal and external height, width, depth, distance from rail to front door, doors on the front, back, sides, (or not) ventilation, cable management, some have power distro and fans in them - the list of variants is endless! (And the prices.)
Since a lot of SOHO gear is not rack mountable, you'd have to buy "shelves" for it all.
A lot of cabs are metal and as such you wouldn't want to put your Wi-Fi Access Points (or routers) inside them as it'll kill the Wi-FI (Wi-Fi hates anything wet or metal in the way.)
If you house active heat producing equipment in them, heat dissipation and ventilation can also be an issue: If you put a lot of active gear in a small cab with all sides closed, they can get toasty pretty quickly!
So it does rather beg the question, "do you want to bother" for a small SOHO installation...? If the kit and the cable termination is all sequested away in a cupboard you are never going to see, and/or if little or none of your kit is rack mountable, you might perhaps save yourself the money. If your cabling guy is presenting all the termination onto a patch panel, again if it's in a locale that's "out of sight" a PP can be mounted on a couple of stout battens screwed to the wall.
It might perhaps be worth googling for some images of these things ("19 inch rack cabinet" would be a good search term) and see what you think and have a look through this forum as some AVF'ers who have done their own DIY cabling jobs have submitted "write ups" with photos of their work. |
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2-12-2019 04:38:32
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