Quick answer – office & MDU cabling with POE-Jack®

In modern Canadian offices and MDUs, you usually don’t need four Cat6 home-runs to every desk or suite. A zone-based design using in-wall PoE switches (Active POE-Jack® wall plates), 23-AWG Cat6e CMP risers and a high-wattage core PoE switch can replace legacy “four drops per location” designs with far fewer cables, ports and patch panels.

One 23-AWG Cat6e permanent link runs from the telecom room to each pod, office or suite and lands on an in-wall 4-port Gigabit PoE switch wall plate such as APOEJK2-WH. A GRID PoE switch like POEJK-S48-750E or POEJK-S48-3600 in the telecom room becomes the central “power plant” for dozens of these zones.

• Core PoE “power plant” switches in the IDF/telecom room for shared PoE budgets, UPS and monitoring.
• 23-AWG Cat6e CMP or CMR cabling (e.g. POEJC6E-CMP) for risers and horizontals to zones, not every individual device.
• Active POE-Jack® wall plates (APOEJK2-WH) and ceiling consolidation boxes (e.g. POEJK-CPE1) fanning out short drops to desks, APs, cameras and touch panels.
• Slim Cat6A patch cords at the rack and desks to keep bundles tidy and easy to manage.

Compared with traditional “four drops per desk” or “one jack + a cheap plastic desk switch,” a POE-Jack® zone design can cut copper, rack space and labour by up to ~75 % while keeping IT in control of VLANs, QoS and PoE budgets.

Who this guide is for

This guide is written for people searching for practical office network cabling in Canada and MDU network cabling approaches that use PoE, in-wall PoE switches and 23-AWG Cat6e instead of endless home-runs.

• IT / network managers responsible for office floors, MDUs, co-working or mixed-use buildings.
• Low-voltage contractors and structured cabling integrators bidding new builds and tenant improvements.
• Developers and property managers comparing cabling proposals and trying to reclaim riser and telecom space.
• Architects and engineers who must balance flexibility, riser capacity and LEED / sustainability goals.
• Co-working operators who constantly reconfigure desks, pods and suites and are tired of re-pulling cable.

Why traditional office & MDU cabling wastes copper and ports

Four-drop home-run designs in Canadian offices

The legacy spec for office network cabling in Canada still assumes a four-drop home-run per workstation: PC, phone, printer and a spare. That often means four Cat6 or Cat6A cables from the telecom room to each desk or office.

• Oversized bundles that fill trays and conduits long before the building itself is full.
• Large telecom rooms and IDFs sized around patch fields that are half dark ports.
• Moves/adds/changes that require new pulls whenever pods move or teams grow.
• Power bricks under every desk and unmanaged mini-switches that IT doesn’t want to support.

As more devices become PoE-powered (phones, APs, thin clients, touch panels), this “one cable per device” mindset becomes more expensive and harder to manage with each project.

Per-suite home-runs in MDUs and what goes wrong

Multi-dwelling units (MDUs), apartments and mixed-use towers often repeat the same pattern at larger scale: full copper bundles per suite, sometimes per room, from the riser to the unit.

• Riser shafts packed with copper and firestopping that is hard to maintain and upgrade.
• Suites needing cameras, Wi-Fi and IoT with no space for racks or wall-mount switches.
• Owners asking for upgrades (cameras, Wi-Fi, room controls) without tearing open risers and corridors.
• Risers near stairwells or parkades that can see −30 °C and below in Canadian winters.

Conventional “one device = one home-run” designs simply do not scale for PoE-heavy office and MDU environments. Zone cabling with in-wall PoE switches is one way to fix that without giving up standards-based structured cabling.

Zone cabling with POE-Jack® vs four-drop home-runs

POE-Jack® takes the familiar idea of a wall plate and turns it into an in-wall 4-port Gigabit PoE switch powered by the network. One Cat6e uplink in; multiple PoE ports out at the wall or ceiling.

Core PoE “power plant” in the telecom room

At the centre of the design is a 48-port PoE+/PoE++ switch with a large shared PoE budget, such as POEJK-S48-750E or POEJK-S48-3600. These GRID switches concentrate power, monitoring and UPS integration in one place instead of scattering power bricks through suites and offices.

• Centralised UPS, metering and monitoring instead of dozens of random PSUs.
• Single point to enforce VLANs, QoS, energy policies and scheduled shut-downs.
• High-speed uplinks for aggregation back to the core or data centre.

23-AWG Cat6e risers to zones, not every device

Instead of four home-runs per desk or per room, you run one 23-AWG Cat6e CMP or CMR link (e.g. POEJC6E-CMP) from the telecom room to each zone: desk pod, office, suite, corridor cabinet or ceiling consolidation point. Heavier-gauge copper handles PoE+ and PoE++ power with lower resistance and heat rise than thin horizontal cable, which matters in tightly bundled risers and trays.

• Fewer cables per floor, fewer penetrations to fire-stop and more room in shared raceways.
• Better voltage at edge devices, even at longer runs and higher PoE loads.
• Clear separation between permanent links (23-AWG bulk) and patching (slim Cat6A).

POE-Jack® in-wall switches & ceiling consolidation

At each zone, an Active POE-Jack® plate turns that single uplink into up to four PoE ports at the convergent edge: behind a TV, at a workstation cluster, in a hallway cabinet or above a ceiling tile in a consolidation box such as POEJK-CPE1.

• One Cat6e home-run feeds four edge ports for phones, APs, cameras, thin clients, touch panels or signage players.
• Short device drops instead of long device home-runs, reducing voltage drop and failure points.
• Multiple POE-Jack® plates can live in a consolidation box with short drops to desks or workstations.

POE-Jack® patterns for offices, MDUs and co-working spaces

Desk pod pattern – one home-run, four ports at the wall

For open-office pods and small meeting rooms, a single 23-AWG Cat6e run from the telecom room feeds a POE-Jack® in-wall plate or surface box at the pod.

• Port 1: VoIP phone or softphone dock.
• Port 2: Docking station, mini-PC or thin client.
• Port 3: Wi-Fi 6 access point nearby.
• Port 4: Spare for a camera, USB-C PoE adapter or future device.

Compared with three or four home-runs to a passive wall plate, the pod still gets four live ports—but with one riser cable and one core switch port instead of four.

MDU hallway pattern – plates and switches in corridor cabinets

In MDUs, POE-Jack® plates and compact PoE switches can live in corridor cabinets or ceiling boxes on each floor instead of filling the riser with per-suite bundles.

• Hallway plate feeds a suite’s Wi-Fi, door camera, IPTV box and intercom/touch panel via short in-suite runs.
• Corridor APs and cameras plug into the same zone hardware instead of separate home-runs.
• Riser cables and patch fields shrink dramatically while each suite still gets Ethernet and PoE where it needs it.

Co-working pattern – flexible pods backed by central PoE

Co-working and flex space benefit from “always-ready” zones that can absorb tenant changes without re-pulling cable. A grid of POE-Jack® pods or ceiling consolidation boxes provides spare ports where desks are likely to land next.

• Desk clusters can be reconfigured by moving short drops and updating labels—no new riser cable.
• IT keeps visibility and control compared to unmanaged switches brought in by tenants.
• Spare PoE capacity at each zone lets you add APs or cameras later without redesigning the floor.

Design patterns & recommended GRID combos

These patterns illustrate how GRID Networking and POE-Jack® components combine for typical Canadian office and MDU scenarios. Adjust sizes and counts to match your final design.

How this design helps IT, contractors and owners

A POE-Jack® zone cabling design changes who does what work and where the complexity lives.

• IT & network teams: fewer core switch ports, no mystery desk switches, clear PoE budgets and centralised VLAN and QoS control.
• Low-voltage contractors: fewer home-runs to pull and terminate, smaller pathways to coordinate and simpler MACs when tenants move or add devices.
• Owners & developers: smaller telecom rooms, cleaner risers and a clear “dematerialised cabling” story that plays well with LEED or ESG reporting.
• Tenants and occupants: more usable outlets where devices live—behind TVs, at desks, in corridors—without wall warts and ad-hoc switches.

LEED & riser relief: dematerialising office and MDU cabling

By converting four-drop home-runs into single-run zones, a POE-Jack® design can reduce the amount of copper, patch panels, racks and cable management hardware required for a floor by up to ~75 %. That “dematerialisation” directly supports green-building and LEED-style lifecycle impact reduction when you quantify cable, jack and tray reductions.

• Fewer cables per floor mean lighter trays, smaller conduits and more available plenum space.
• Reduced PVC and plenum jacket volume can support low-emitting materials strategies.
• Centralised PoE power allows more efficient UPS and power conversion than hundreds of distributed AC bricks.

For formal LEED work, pair this article with your LEED-focused POE-Jack® cabling guide and document “before vs after” material quantities in your MR and EA narratives.

When POE-Jack® is (and isn’t) the right answer

Zone cabling with in-wall PoE switches is not a silver bullet. It excels in many office and MDU scenarios, but there are honest edge cases where traditional home-runs or 10G direct links still make sense.

Great fit

• General office floors, MDUs, co-working spaces, clinics, schools and light commercial.
• Meeting rooms, collaboration zones, amenity and lobby areas.
• PoE-heavy floors where APs, cameras and touch panels share the same cabling plant.

Good fit with planning

• High-density AP or camera clusters, provided PoE budgets and uplinks are sized correctly.
• Hybrid designs where a few areas keep traditional home-runs for policy or performance reasons.

Use traditional designs instead

• Ultra-latency-sensitive trading desks or studio/control rooms with strict design standards.
• Very high power density per desk far beyond PoE or in-wall plate budgets.
• Projects where policy forbids active electronics in walls or ceilings.

In practice, many Canadian projects end up with a hybrid design: some desks or suites on direct 10G home-runs, others on POE-Jack® zones, all feeding the same standards-based Ethernet and PoE backbone.

Next steps: standard office & MDU BOM templates

Once you are comfortable with the patterns, you can build standard bills of materials (BOMs) for repeated project types.

• Example – 50-desk office floor: 1× 48-port PoE switch (S48-750E or S48-3600), 1× small auxiliary PoE switch, 12–16× APOEJK2-WH plates, 1× POEJK-CPE1 ceiling consolidation box for open areas, 1 spool of 23-AWG Cat6e bulk, 1–2× POEJKPP6-24 patch panels and slim patch cords.
• Example – 40-suite MDU stack: 1–2× core PoE switches, hallway APOEJK2-WH plates or corridor cabinets serving 4–8 suites each, 23-AWG Cat6e riser, short in-suite drops and enough patch ports to match the zone design (not four ports per suite).

Many teams standardise these into “office floor kit” and “MDU stack kit” templates, then tune counts for device density, PoE loads and riser constraints.

Installer’s take – real-world results

“We cut a riser tray in half.”

On a mid-rise office project, shifting from four-drop home-runs to POE-Jack® zones allowed the riser design to shrink from dual 4" trays to a single smaller tray. Cable installers reported fewer pulls, easier firestopping at each floor and a tidier riser that will be easier to expand in the future.

“Co-working no longer destroys our patch field.”

In a co-working space where desks move constantly, the patch field used to be a mess after every reconfiguration. With pod-based POE-Jack® zones and clearly labelled ports, most changes are now local: move a desk, move a short patch cord, update a label. The core patch panels stay stable and readable.

“The property manager finally understands the cabling bill.”

Zone designs make it easier to explain costs to non-technical stakeholders. Instead of “four drops everywhere just in case,” you can show a map of zones and ports that match how people actually work on each floor. It’s a simpler story to sell during value-engineering and budget reviews.

Canada-ready checklist – office & MDU POE-Jack® cabling

• ✓ Use 23-AWG CMP or CMR bulk cable for high-draw PoE runs in risers, plenums and long horizontals.
• ✓ Separate permanent links from patch cords—no 28–30 AWG as in-wall or in-ceiling permanent cabling.
• ✓ Size PoE “power plants” with realistic diversity and headroom for APs, phones, cameras and future loads.
• ✓ Confirm device temperature ratings for unheated corridors, stairwells and parkade-adjacent spaces.
• ✓ Coordinate early with electrical, mechanical and the AHJ so PoE zones, AC distribution and life-safety systems align.
• ✓ Document zones, outlets and PoE budgets so MACs rarely require re-pulling cable when seating changes.

FAQ – office & MDU cabling with POE-Jack®

Code & design coordination reminder

Always design and install POE-Jack® systems in accordance with local electrical and building codes and applicable standards. Verify cable ratings for riser and plenum spaces, confirm device temperature ratings for Canadian environments and coordinate designs with IT, electrical, mechanical and the Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) before locking in a PoE-heavy topology.

Specifications and design recommendations are subject to change. Always confirm final details against the latest GRID Networking and POE-Jack® documentation and your project requirements before tender or construction.