Hi

I'm currrently planning for a retrofit for structured cabling in line with renovations (the walls aren't coming off), primarily Cat6 for ethernet. I'll primarily be wiring this myself.

My main question is what to use at home distribution location. My original plan was for using PDL style boxes flush mounted likely with quad jack face plates, I was using some of these in past albeit not flush mounted. (I'm aware 6 jack ones exist but from what I read installing the jacks can be rather difficult even more so I expect with thicker Cat6 cable.) For the 8 ports I'd need two, plug probably another box for the phone (using a splitter so one for voice, one for DSL) plus sat+antenna.

But it seems a common alternative is to get a patch panel, perhaps a 12 port one. While I've read some of these can be flush mounted, (at least some of the ones sold internationally can I'm not sure sure about the ones sold in NZ) am I right there's limited advantage in that case? It has slightly more expandability (presuming I get a 12 port) without adding another hole but doesn't necessarily look better. While it keeps things slightly closer together am I right the bigger reason for patch panels tends to be for wall mounted configs, particularly in cabinet or when you have a lot of ports (like 24 or more)?

Once fibre comes in I'd likely get this attached to a new flush mounted box (and since this is not something I can wire myself, changing it around starts to become questionable at that point) although according to Chorus that will be at least ~2.5 years away.

I'm aware of options for in wall mounted cabinets like the SigNet ST2000, but I'm not sure if that would work well for my situation. While you fit a switch, the ADSL modem inside these can just as well go in the cabinet I'm planning to have in front of the flush mounted boxes. (This can also fit a PVR and if needed a NAS or whatever else.)

Cheers