Ethernet/Patch Panel Port Naming Conventions

[benward1]

Interested to know what people’s typical naming conventions are for Ethernet/data/patch panel points around your schools. We’re in a single multi story building and using FLOOR/Port eg 01/125. I’m looking at moving to CABNUMBER/PatchPanel/port eg C4/01/002. 

 

All of our (full height) cabs are in a single server room. There are 200 odd ports on each floor so 0/001 to 0/200, 1/001 to 1/200 etc. The patch panels are at the top of cabs, switches at bottom. I will change this. 

 

Advice and recommendations welcome! 

[MatthewL]

Floor/Port number works well, cab/port number also works, both have pros and cons.  Having worked in a site with multicabs it does help if its a big site (talking hospital scale), would except in a school you would know which cabs serve what areas.

[timbo343]

We have the following format where possible:

Cab / PP / port

 

It very much depends on what works for you. At one of our sites we have part floor plans at each of the cabs showing where each of the sockets go back to.

 

Given you know the locations of the cabs, that's very much half the battle of finding where cables terminate.

 

[ThomL]

We're Cab Letter/Patch Panel No. e.g. B021, E255. Site was already setup in this configuration when I joined and configured this way when the school was rebuild.

 

Works well enough, but then again we are single site, one building, 2 floors, not too many networking cabs about the place - networking was planned fairly well during the rebuild, with purpose built rooms for the racks/equipment throughout the building. In my previous two roles/schools ports were just labelled with a number and then it was tribal knowledge which of the many many cabs you had to head to and cabs could be anywhere - random rooms/classrooms - rather frustrating.

Edited November 6, 2025 by ThomL

[FN-GM]

The exact same system as you. Works well.

[Rob_D]

Our newer stuff is "building and network cab ID/Sequential number", so CA/097. But a lot of our legacy stuff is done by "port room number/sequential number", so C101/01

 

While convention seems to be to label based on the switch/server rack its patched in on, I can see some use in naming based on where the port is.