The definitive cable management guide for in-wall ethernet cables in your home network rack

I confess I had no idea how to manage the cables connected to my router in the basement. The electrician who put in the first few cables just left those hanging with ethernet jacks — some of them are not long enough.

Over time when three increased to ten, not only was it horribly difficult for the electrician to add jacks to the end of cables (it would sometimes take multiple attempts to get the ethernet working properly), it was a pretty bad mess even with my feeble attempts to make it all look nice.

So, recently after ~3 years of dealing with an ever growing mess, I did some research, talked to my electrician, reached a conclusion, and then today I finally got it all organized properly. You may know what to do, but you do not know what it is called, and what parts you need to put it all together. This is your guide.

It is called a keystone patch panel, and the magic is called keystone jacks — which can do everything you could think of from HDMI, to ethernet jacks to “punched down” ethernet cables.

The reason you should use keystone jacks is because it is easy to connect these jacks to a bare…