I am in the very early stages of planning a network cabling upgrade in our office, mainly to upgrade the old cables from Cat5 to either 5e or 6. I am also planning on upgrading all of our 10/100 switches to 10/100/1000 switches.

I would like to have three small wall mounted cabinets spread around the building, each with a patch panel and switch. These would all lead back to our server room.

The question is; should I have two patch panels in each wall cabinet, one with 24 or 48 ports that are connected to a matching patch panel in the server room. The second patch panel would then link to each device in that cabinets area. Then I wouldn't put a switch in the small cabinets. All switching would be done in the server room. Or, should I have one main cable from the server room to each of the cabinets - plugged straight into the switch and the patch panel is for devices in the cabinets area?

I hope that makes sense!