Original ethernet in the farm office started in the 80's or early 90's with 2- or 4-wire twisted pairs (phone wire?).  Upgrades were intermittent and continued through maybe a CAT5-ish era, which was what, 15-20 years ago?   Not bad for a circa-2000 setup but the wiring cabinet area could use a once-in-a-decade revamp.

Right now the wiring cabinet area houses 20-ish network wires, DSL router, VPN router, backup VPN router, switch, backup switch.  We have determined that voltage spikes are an issue that blow up something once a year or so so we just ordered in a line conditioner/battery backup.  The file server is in a tower w/ battery backup elsewhere in the network.


Looking at installing a wall-mounted rack system, in the 15U range, in the existing wiring cabinet area.  Since, of course, the wiring cabinet area is also the utility closet area ...

And now … rack choices.  Open vs closed/vented, screwed to the wall vs. fold-out/hinged, etc.  Comments on the style of rack choice? 

Line conditioner/battery takes up 3U on a shelf, 2U's for switches, 2U's for future patch panel/cable organization for future wiring, another 4+U's on a shelf for existing routers that aren't rack-mountable, and a little extra space for whatever might happen next.  Any serious future upgrades would be moved into a different room with a better actual setup, but right now just looking to better organize a pile of wires and routers stacked haphazardly on a shelf ...