The History of Network Cabling

In the early days, cabling for communication purposes where done without considering the future requirements. Networks in those days were very small with only some requirements and so no cabling or networking standards were followed then. As time went by, communication needs grew bigger and complex which compelled the vendors to create standards to provide interoperability. 

Digital Communication actually started with the invention of ‘Telegraph’ by Samuel Morse in 1844 using which he sent a message 37 miles away from Washington D.C. to Baltimore. Telegraph was invented using ‘Morse Code’ which is a language consisting of dots and dashes. The difference is that while the telegraph operators of the mid 19^th century was able to transmit 4 or 5 dots and dashes in a second, our modern communication systems is now able to transfer at 1 Gigabit speeds or 1,000,000,000 separate 1’s and 0’s every second.

As the popularity of personal computers increased, the hardware parts for networking began to become standardized, particularly for cabling. The necessity of the need to communicate at higher speeds using computers led to the development of faster and faster networking equipments and higher specification cables and connectors.  

The first popular type of cable was a type of copper cable called the Coaxial cable which was soon replaced by another copper media cable called the Twisted Pair cable widely used in telephone lines. Demands for faster network connection with less noise led to modification of these twisted pairs. Vendors began to improve up on twisted pair cables by adding more number of twists, increasing the number of pairs, and protecting the cables by shielding with outer core. Modern type of twisted pair cables have 4 pairs and have more twists than compared to earlier types. The modern cables like CAT5, CAT5e and CAT6 have more quality and data handling capability than older cable versions and it also allows to have one cabling system to handle both voice and data communication needs.

The new trend in network cabling is the concept of structured cabling in which one wiring scheme is used for all voice, data and other services like video, multimedia, security, VoIP, PoE and wireless connections throughout the building or campus. It includes every networking device like cabling, equipments, connecting hardware, rooms for telecommunication, cable path ways, and even the jacks on the wall-plate in the building. A well structured cabling system can be considered as the life-blood of the organization which can serve for years if installed properly.

In the beginning of 1990’s the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) asked the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) to propose a universal standard for the network cabling system. The already existing design created by AT&T was the most suitable solution for this issue. The networks of this system used the telephone distribution systems that were already installed in most office buildings. They used twisted pair cables as the main transmission medium and used star topology. The outcome of the commission work was published as the first specification for structured cabling in July 1991 which was referred to as ANSI/TIA/EIA 568. Later many new documents were published which defined the basic transmission requirements for Category 3, 4 and 5. As a result of the new high speed protocol development- the Gigabit Ethernet all the published standards where updated in 2000 and 2002.

IEEE (Institute of Electrical & electronics Engineers) released the 802.3 official Ethernet standard 10BASE-T in 1983. In 1985 IEEE 802.3a was released. It was known as Thin Ethernet or 10BASE-2. Since 1983, various different standards were introduced because of the increased bandwidth requirements.