This is one of those methods that's so flexible it usually ends up giving the user enough rope to hang themselves with. If everything is general purpose, then as Bill pointed out there's a high risk that something will be patched wrong. Beyond that, it's just more time every show because it adds steps to getting the systems online.
The general standard I see, beyond my own designs, is that ports are reserved around the theater for Lighting Net and Audio Net that go back to switches, leaving general purpose
UTP and/or
STP jacks going back to patch bays with a set number of ports on those patch bays going back to each of the
network switches. This way when you need to get a
console or a
stage box on the
network, you know when you
plug in that your "Audio Net 34"
spigot is always going to be work right out of the box. This also puts the
network switches in the back of the rack leaving only the stuff the user has to see on the front of the rack. This makes for more stable systems and makes it much harder for a user to unknowingly take their whole
system offline. This also makes it easy to standardize that anything on a
network is CAT6 (very little
point for 6A in the foreseeable future), and that anything on
UTP/
STP tie is 6A, which is more likely to be used for bandwidths in excess of 1 Gig.
I would caution that more isn't always better. CAT7 has very few
practical uses today. I've only encountered it once. Even making the jump from CAT6 to CAT6A can be pretty expensive but 6A at least has
practical applications for point-to-point video. If you're really concerned about flexibility over time, you're better off pulling SM and MM fiber around your
venue, which can be used for just about anything. It'll be cheaper overall and easier to install. The primary benefit to copper is that it's natively useable without media converters -- but how much money do you want to
drop to avoid converters?
