How to make use of this non-standard network cabinet in the garage

cablingtelephone

I have a network cabinet in my garage, but I've discovered that it seems to be a non-standard size, and I can't find anything to fit it.

It looks to have been installed by the previous owners for their telecom system (they had 4 phone lines throughout the house). I would like to convert it to a network/telecom panel, with leaving two of the existing wires on the telecom, and converting the rest to gigabit ether, and the two wires left on the telecom, I want to use as 100 mbit ether.

Here is an image of the patch panel with it's dimensions (all dimensions are rough):
Patch Panel and dimensions

As far as I can tell, the center pole is riveted in place and can't easily be removed. There is also, plenty of play in the ethernet cables, so I can move stuff up or down easily. The cabling is cat-5e.

I've searched monoprice and I can't find anything that will fit it, and google isn't being helpful either. Do they make stuff to fit this size and I just can't find this? Do I need to remove it and put in a larger sized cabinet? Or is it just useless?

Additional note: The current telecom splitter that is in there is made by Dynaflex Inc, who are no longer in business.

Best Answer

This is one of the residential structured media cabinets that you can get at any of the big box stores, made by Leviton and several others (your pic is too low resolution for me to read the name on the phone block, there may also be a name on the cabinet door).

You can buy additional blocks of all sorts of things to fit in these, such as network patches, switches, routers, etc.

Leviton loaded panel

It's probably much cheaper just to buy standard 19" stuff from Monoprice, and then regular 19" rackmount switches/routes from manufacturers that actually specialize in network gear (as opposed to light switches and plugs), but that's just my opinion. I used standard stuff at my house, it was fairly cheap and looks great -- I'll post a pic later.

It really just depends on how you want it to look when completed, how much work you want to do vs using what's there, and of course how much you want to spend.