Advantage of patch panel?

patch panel is a wallboard mounted piece of hardware that serves as a central localtion for multiple incoming and outgoing lines for LAN, WAN, telephony, audio and other electronic connections.

The advantage of using a patch panel is that it allows manual monitoring, testing, switching, routing, and other maintenance to be handled quickly because the cables in the front (patch cords or patch cables) that connect to the more permanent cables in the back are configured and made so that changes can be made quickly and easily when needed.

Patch panels are basically a grid where all network cabling meet up at a single point for a particular area (floor or building). Switches or network equipment cost lots of money and the per-port cost makes it prohibitive to make the entire patch-panel "hot" (connected to the network). This causes you to selectively connect network cables from a switch to a patch-panel port where you expect equipment to be connected. If switches were dirt-cheap you could theoretically remove the patch panel and just plug everything into switches--thereby making every port active within the entire floor/building.