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Not many industries have mastered the art of survival-and growth-as admirably as the structured cabling industry. There have been times when skeptics predicted a dead end for the industry, but innovations always sprung up to put apprehensions to rest.

A few years ago, people would bluntly remark: Huh. What structured cabling? After all, they are just another set of wires.

Slowly, the change in mindset set in, induced by the spread of awareness, and of course, the hard-learned lessons that followed network-related fiascos.

Structured cabling is a fairly sophisticated area now, thanks to the multi-million dollar R&D spends by the leading global vendors in the domain.

Vendors' spends and efforts have not gone unrewarded. Prasanna Kumar V, sales director, Systimax Solutions-India and Saarc, reveals, "From responses of CIOs and IT heads who attended our recently concluded seminar series, we were able to infer that 44 percent of organizations recognize the importance of upgrading their networks and are planning to future-proof their backbone cabling infrastructure using the latest 10G Ethernet infrastructure within the next two years."

Enterprise Broadway
Continuous improvements in structured cabling systems have ensured that campus-wide networks are always ahead of any other network in terms of speed and bandwidth. Recent and ongoing tech developments are further ensuring that.

It's been a while since fiber became the near default medium on the campus backbone and Cat 5e and Cat 6 were used in the horizontal. The developments have ensured a scenario where 1Gbps in the backbone and 100 Mbps for the desktop are norms for all new installations.

It is anticipated that newer, video-intensive communication trends at enterprises will demand 1G-to-the-desktop in the next couple of years. The structured cabling industry is already in a position to support such demand.

Bala K Chandran, MD, Krone India, says, "Traditionally, passive constituents have always been ahead of active constituents. For example, Cat 5e cabling for 1G Ethernet entered the market during 1995. It was not until 1999 that 1G active hardware hit the market. 10 Gig UTP cabling is expected to be supported by active hardware in a similar pattern."

Not everybody sees a quick uptake for 10G UTP in the pre-standard stage. SA Mohan, general manager, sales and marketing, Molex India sees only a niche market for 10G. He explains, "Even 1G in the horizontal is not commercially practical due to the high cost of 1000BaseT ports. This essentially leaves building and campus backbone for high-speed connectivity where the preferred media is fiber due to its longer distance support and immunity to interference. Hence, 10G over copper, when approved by standards may have its niche application and is unlikely to replace fiber."

Nevertheless, a speedier ratification of the 10G UTP standard-which is likely to be called Cat A6-can change the outlook.

Hand in Hand with Wireless
Only until a year ago, fears hovered over the structured cabling industry that the march of wireless would flatten the latter's business.

Dark clouds quickly gave way to plenty of silver.

Far from being a competing technology, wireless is turning out to be a complementary one. It has already expanded the market.

Also, with the power-over-Ethernet (PoE) technology coming into play, wireless access points and other such devices will need structured cabling as the underlying infrastructure.

The technology [PoE ] works by injecting DC-converted power over the spare pairs of Cat 5 and above cables. Various WLAN equipment and end-user devices including laptops and VoIP phones can then be plugged into the cable to draw DC power.

The technology, as one can see, converges not just telephony and Internet-but also power-on a single medium, copper.

This will also address the problem of an IP call getting disconnected in the event of a power failure.

The Outlook
Already, structured cabling deployments in existing areas like telecom, BPO and education have registered good growth. Also, newer areas, especially multi-facility buildings, have exhibited a strong demand.

While IT/software companies are likely to be the early adopters of new technologies, as has traditionally been the case, data centers will also discover their importance before long.

Storage area networks could turn out to be one of the biggest consumers of 10G-over-copper, once vendors like Cisco, Enterasys, Nortel, Foundry Networks, Extreme Networks, et al come out with port support for 10G copper.

That could bring prices down to as much as one-fourth of the existing fiber-channel port prices. The existing ports pushes SANs in a bracket that's beyond the reach of most of the enterprises today.

Cheaper technology will expand the market and open up newer streams too, in the interest of all-structured cabling vendors, active component makers, and user organizations.

The ball, however, is in the active gear makers' court at the moment. Will they love to have a long rally?

Deepak Kumar