6 techniques for making your network installations quicker and easier

1. Buy pre-wired punch-down blocks. Why spend time manually punching cables into 66 or 110 blocks when you can buy them pre-wired? Just mount the block and plug your RJ21 or RJ45 connectors right into it. It’s as simple as that! Click here browse TeleDynamics’ range of wiring blocks.
   
   
2. Use cheater cords. Have more devices than places to plug them in? Instead of running additional cables, use cheater cords from EZCORDS. With just one click you can split a 4-pair cable into two TCP/IP ports, or into one TCP/IP and one 4-wire telephone port, or into two analog and two digital extension circuits, or into four separate 2-wire telephone circuits, or…..well, you get the idea! Check out our range of EZCORDS products here.
   
   
3. Speed up wall mounting. When wall-mounting a PBX or other hardware with drill holes in the back, make a photocopy of the back of the device, or hold a piece of paper against it and use a pencil to punch through the drill holes. Now you have a pattern for drilling the holes into the wall in the right places.
   
   
4. Power SIP phones through the Ethernet. Some SIP phones get their electrical power through the Ethernet rather than through an electrical cord. Referred to as power-over-Ethernet or PoE, this feature allows you to free up the power outlets for other things and use fewer cables at each work station.
   
   
5. Take advantage of the extra network port on most SIP phones to run both a phone and PC off one CAT-5/6 network connection. In other words, plug the SIP phone into the Ethernet jack, then connect the computer to the second port on the phone. That way, you only need to run a single Ethernet cable to each work station.
   
   
6. Auto-provision SIP phones. TeleDynamics offers auto-provisioning services so your SIP phones arrive ready to “plug and play.” This also allows each phone to be tested beforehand to ensure that all of your equipment arrives in working order. See our blog post about auto-provisioning to learn more. 

Do you have any other time-saving installation techniques? Share them with our community using the comment form below. We would love to hear about them!