Wiring closet

Short description: Room or enclosure for wiring and equipment

An equipment box of the type that might be found in a wiring cupboard

A wiring closet or wiring cupboard is a small room or enclosure in a building, commonly found in schools, offices, and other institutional or commercial buildings, that houses electrical and telecommunications equipment, allowing access to circuits and network connections. While they are used for many purposes, their most common use is for computer networking, where it may be called a premises wire distribution room. Many types of network connections place limits on the distance between end user equipment, such as personal computers, and network access devices, such as routers. These restrictions might require multiple wiring cupboards on each floor of a large building.

The inside of a wiring closet at a small public university. Visible are an optical fiber switch (top), a 66-type punch block (left), and two 110-type punch blocks (right, bottom). The orange conduit contains optical fiber cable.

Equipment that may be found in a wiring closet includes:

• Alarm systems
• Circuit breaker panels
• Video systems, such as cable TV and closed-circuit television systems
• Network switches
• Wireless access points
• Fiber optic terminations
• Patch panels
• Punch-down blocks

See also

• Equipment room
• Server room
• On-premises wiring