In summary<\/p>\n
- \n
- Cabling is the only part of the infrastructure that lasts 15 to 20 years.<\/strong> Everything else is replaced over and over on top of it.<\/li>\n
- Certification is not continuity testing.<\/strong> It is measuring with calibrated equipment and issuing a report per socket.<\/li>\n
- Saving on cabling is the false economy is more expensive<\/strong> in IT infrastructure.<\/li>\n
- An office move is a sole opportunity<\/strong> of doing this well with no additional construction cost.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
\nIn this article<\/p>\n
- \n
- Because the wiring determines everything<\/a><\/li>\n
- What is network certification<\/a><\/li>\n
- Which category to choose<\/a><\/li>\n
- What a good project includes<\/a><\/li>\n
- Signs of poor wiring<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n
Cabling is the most invisible part of an IT infrastructure and the one that stays there the longest. Switches are replaced after five or six years, servers after four or five, and computers even quicker. Cabling, on the other hand, stays in the wall for fifteen or twenty years \u2014 and limits everything that comes to be installed on top of it.<\/p>\n
Because the wiring determines everything<\/h2>\n
No equipment delivers more than the cabling allows. You can install modern switches and state-of-the-art access points: if the cable between them is old, poorly terminated or too long, performance is bottlenecked by the weakest link.<\/p>\n
What makes this treacherous is that the wiring rarely fails cleanly. It doesn't stop working \u2014 it degrades. Intermittent slowdowns appear, patternless connection drops, slower transfers on some workstations than on others. Symptoms that are blamed on the computer, the server, the operator, and almost never the cable.<\/p>\n
\nThe account that matters.<\/strong> Cabling accounts for a small proportion of the total investment in an infrastructure, but it lasts the longest and is the most expensive to replace later\u2014because it involves messing about with ceilings, walls and the day-to-day running of the business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.dataroad.es\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/vecteezy_panel-switch-with-free-ports_3057720-1024x768.jpg\")
The certification tests every connection from the panel to the charging station and delivers a report for each socket.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n What is network certification<\/h2>\n
There is an important difference between test<\/em> e certify<\/em>, and that is where many proposals stand out.<\/p>\n
Test<\/strong> it is to check that there is a connection between both ends \u2014 that the wires are in the right order and signal passes. It is done with a cheap device and tells you very little.<\/p>\n
Certify<\/strong> it involves measuring the electrical performance of each connection using calibrated equipment, comparing the values obtained with the standard limits for the installed category. It measures attenuation, crosstalk, delay skew and other parameters that determine whether that socket will handle the promised throughput \u2014 today and ten years from now.<\/p>\n
The result is a report by socket<\/strong>, with measured values and individual approval or rejection. It is this document that provides a guarantee and allows you to demand corrections.<\/p>\n
Always demand certification with a report. An installation without certification is an installation without proof.<\/p>\n
Which category to choose<\/h2>\n
Category choice is a time-horizon decision, not one of immediate necessity. The right question isn\u2019t \u201cwhat do I need today\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s \u201cwhat will be going down this cable in ten years\u201d time\u201d.<\/p>\n
Three practical criteria guide the decision. The expected debit<\/strong> over the coming years, relying on video, backups and cloud growing. The distances<\/strong> involved, because above certain lengths the options narrow. And the Power over Ethernet<\/strong>, increasingly relevant: access points, cameras and phones are powered by the network cable itself, and this requires suitable conductors.<\/p>\n
The difference in cost between categories is mostly material. Labour \u2014 which is the dominant portion \u2014 is practically the same. Saving here saves little and limits a lot.<\/p>\n
What a good project includes<\/h2>\n
A serious structured cabling proposal covers more than metres of cable:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Survey and plan<\/strong> with the location of each socket and the route of each conveyor belt.<\/li>\n
- Organised chassis<\/strong> \u2014 termination panels, cable management and room for growth. A well-built rack is recognised the moment you open the door.<\/li>\n
- Identification<\/strong> of all sockets and cables at both ends. Without this, any future intervention starts with guesswork.<\/li>\n
- Certification with report<\/strong> by phone.<\/li>\n
- Final documentation<\/strong> Hand over to the client \u2014 floor plan, socket layout and reports. It is company property, not the installer's.<\/li>\n
- Room for growth<\/strong>, typically 20 to 30% sockets more than current requirements. Adding them during the build is cheap; adding them afterwards is not.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Signs of poor wiring<\/h2>\n
If you recognise three or more of these symptoms, it is worth checking before investing in anything else:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Workstations consistently slower than others, with no explanation on the computer<\/li>\n
- Calls that drop and reconnect without an identifiable pattern<\/li>\n
- Unidentified cables in the rack, or a rack where nobody can trace a cable from end to end<\/li>\n
- Connections made with improvised plugs or visible splices<\/li>\n
- Wiring installed over fifteen years ago and never certified<\/li>\n
- New equipment that does not deliver the expected performance<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
And the right time to sort all this out once and for all is relocation of premises<\/a> \u2014 the only time the network is rebuilt from scratch with no additional labour cost and without stopping the business.<\/p>\n
- Organised chassis<\/strong> \u2014 termination panels, cable management and room for growth. A well-built rack is recognised the moment you open the door.<\/li>\n
- What is network certification<\/a><\/li>\n
- Certification is not continuity testing.<\/strong> It is measuring with calibrated equipment and issuing a report per socket.<\/li>\n