ABSTRACT
Structured cabling, sometimes called premises cabling, arose as a new subject in the early 1980s after it became apparent that the growth of the information technology (IT) business could be slowed by the wide range of incompatible cables and network interfaces that had grown up with the computer mainframe industry of the 1960s and 1970s. When computers were first generally deployed it was the practice of every manufacturer to design their own cables specifically for a certain range of computers. There were a few standards such as RS 232 but more often companies like IBM would specify a cable for every computer system in their product range. Cables and con nectors could be any combination of twisted pairs, multicores, coaxial cables or even the ‘new tangled’ optical fibres.
