Keystone Jacks – ‘Plugging in’ for Beauty

Whether it is in the office or at home, everyone wants to have a nice and clean place. Everyone wants wires to be concealed and go in one straight line, covering a short distance. With keystone jacks, you can achieve just that. They are small and nifty little jacks that connect into a keystone wall plate; providing simplicity, efficient cable management and pleasing aesthetics. Let’s look at them shall we?

What are Keystone Jacks?

Have you ever seen flat little white boxes in your lounge room with a simple coaxial jack in it? Those are known as a keystone wall plate and jack. Keystone jacks are, in essence, small little jacks that connect into a keystone wall plate. They are but a single part of a bigger connection.

The best thing about keystone jacks is that they are rater inexpensive. You could buy literally 50 of the Cat6 RJ45 keystone jacks, as shown on the left, for almost $1.

However, you must remember that keystone jacks are not of any single type. There are many different types of keystone jacks available in the market, each used for a different connection. These include: audio/video, boots, Cat5e, Cat6, incline coupler, RJ 11 and even USB keystone jacks.

How do they work?

Keystone jacks are not made to be used alone. They are used with keystone wall jacks in order to simply cable management. On one end, you will have the wires running through the entire wall, all the way to a keystone wall plate.

From there, they will connect into the keystone jack. Once set up, all you have to do is connect any compatible cable into the wall and presto! Instant connection!

The Advantages

There are a plethora of advantages when it comes to keystone jack adapters. Unfortunately, most people are unaware of more than half of these advantages. What most people try to do is simply connect their cables across an entire room and use hooks to hold them in place. Though, this is not always the best idea, especially where multiple computers are concerned.

Easy Connections – Quite easily the biggest reason why anyone would want to set up keystone jack connections is because future connections will be literally effortless. All you have to do is connection your plug into a keystone jack adapter and voila! Instant connection!

Save Space–Traditionally, you would have a number of wires going across the wall (hugging it)for quite large distances. Not only were these unsightly, they took up a lot of space as well, especially in office environments where there were hundreds, if not thousands of connections. Thankfully, when keystone jacks were invented, it did away with the need to show so much cable.

Using keystone jacks, you can set up a large number of connections in a small amount of space. They allow for a multitude of connections to be made, considering that you have the right keystone jacks in place. In fact, one keystone wall plate can hold up to 12 keystone jacks. The one shown above is a simple Cat6 RJ45 keystone jack.

The wires simply run through the wall and all you see is a simple flat panel with keystone jacks in them. All you have to do is connect a very small piece of wire to it.

Facilitating Large families –In a large family, one of the biggest problems is that of multiple computer usage. If a parent wants to use the internet, the child cannot use the computer until the main cable is free.

However, if there was a 4-hole keystone wall plate and jack nearby, they could easily connect a small cable and use the internet as well. This is especially helpful when you have guests staying the night.

Interchangeability –One of the best things about keystone jacks is that they are easily interchangeable. Each jack is made to the same measurement, 16.0mm high and 14.5mm wide. If you feel that you only need one Ethernet keystone jack in a wall plate instead of 3, you can swap out the others with blank insert jacks or possibly a different kind of keystone jack.

Great for Multiple Customers–In large hotels, homes and offices, you will never see any cable running across the floor or in concealed boxes. This is because they are usually running through the wall, straight into keystone jack connections.

If you look at a hotel, you can see quite easily why they use keystone jacks. Travelers want to come to a nice and clean room, not one with wires showing. They don’t want to see the television cable running across a wall. Additionally, it would obviously be rather silly that they provide each customer with a cable to connect their computer to the internet.

Therefore, keystone jacks make it simple for connections to be provided to multiple customers without hampering aesthetics.

The Disadvantages

With so many advantages, it would be rather naïve to think that there are no downsides to keystone jack. Fortunately, there is only one main limitation of keystone jacks that you should know about.
The limitation is that of confinement. If you have a computer near a keystone wall plate and jack, you can connect it to the jack rather easily. However, if you decide to move the computer elsewhere, you will have to either get a longer connecting cable or make another wall plate and jack connection box. In essence, you are confined to the area around the jack.

Keystone jacks truly enable wires to be concealed rather easily, allowing for a simple and clean look. They are simple, pleasing to look at and are very affordable. It may take a little bit more effort setting everything up but, in the long run, you will be very grateful that you did. Whether it is a home or office, keystone jacks are the way to go for easy, clean and simple cable management.

You can find good quality keystone jacks at cmple