2. Mystery Disconnects That "Fix Themselves"

Your point-of-sale system randomly loses connection. Your office printer goes offline for no reason. Someone's workstation drops off the network, and then: without anyone touching anything: it magically reconnects five minutes later.

These phantom disconnects are maddening because they're inconsistent. One day everything works fine. The next day, chaos. Your team learns to just "restart and hope for the best."

But here's the reality: intermittent connectivity issues are almost always a physical cabling problem. It could be a cable that's been pinched behind furniture, a connector that's slightly loose, or wiring that's degraded over time from heat or humidity. These issues cause electrical signals to drop packets or fail to maintain stable connections.

The problem is, these failures are nearly impossible to diagnose without proper testing equipment. You can't just "eyeball" a bad connection. And every time your network drops, you're losing productivity, data, and potentially revenue: especially if your POS goes down during business hours.

The bottom line? If your network has mystery disconnects that seem to resolve themselves, you've got cabling that needs professional attention. A proper structured cabling assessment can identify these weak points before they become catastrophic failures.

3. The Server Room "Spaghetti" Closet

Open your server room or network closet. What do you see?

If it looks like someone threw a plate of blue and yellow spaghetti at the wall, you've got a problem: and it's not just aesthetic.

Tangled, disorganized cabling creates multiple issues that directly impact your network performance:

• Heat buildup: Cables bundled too tightly can't dissipate heat effectively, which degrades signal quality and shortens cable lifespan

• Electromagnetic interference (EMI): When data cables run parallel to power cables or sit near fluorescent lights or motors, they pick up electrical noise that corrupts your signal

• Troubleshooting nightmares: When something goes wrong, good luck tracing which cable goes where. What should be a 10-minute fix turns into an hour-long ordeal

EMI is particularly insidious because it's invisible. Your network might seem "fine" most of the time, but during peak usage or when certain equipment is running, you'll experience slowdowns and errors that seem random.

Professional structured cabling isn't just about making things look pretty (though that's a nice bonus). It's about organizing your infrastructure so cables are properly separated, labeled, and routed to minimize interference and maximize performance. Plus, when you inevitably need to add new equipment or troubleshoot an issue, you'll actually be able to find what you're looking for.

4. Your Building Hasn't Had a Wiring Update in 10+ Years

When was the last time your business had a cabling upgrade? If the answer is "I'm not sure" or "probably when the building was constructed," you're running on infrastructure that can't support modern business needs.

Think about everything that's changed in the past decade:

• Cloud-based software that requires constant connectivity

• IP-based security cameras streaming HD video 24/7

• VoIP phone systems replacing traditional landlines

• Wireless access points that need wired backhaul connections

• Increased file sizes and data transfer requirements

Your network cabling is like the plumbing in your building. You can have the best fixtures in the world, but if the pipes are old, corroded, and undersized, water pressure is going to suffer. Same principle applies to data.

Old cabling standards simply weren't designed with today's bandwidth demands in mind. Cat5 tops out at 100 Mbps. Cat5e gets you to 1 Gbps. But Cat6 and Cat6a can handle 10 Gbps: and that's not just about raw speed. It's about having the capacity to run multiple high-bandwidth applications simultaneously without creating bottlenecks.

Here's the reality check: If you're planning to add security cameras, upgrade to VoIP, or expand your wireless network, old cabling will hold you back. You'll either experience poor performance or you'll end up needing to re-cable anyway: except now you've wasted time and money trying to make outdated infrastructure work.

5. File Transfers Take Long Enough to Brew Coffee

You need to send a 50MB file to the printer. Or back up data to your local server. Or transfer a video file to a colleague across the office.

And you wait. And wait. And wait some more.

Slow file transfers across a local network are a dead giveaway that your cabling can't keep up. When you're moving data between devices on the same local network, your internet speed is irrelevant. This is purely about the quality and capacity of your internal wiring.

If copying files between computers in the same office takes forever, your cables are creating a data traffic jam. And it's not just annoying: it's expensive. Every minute your team spends waiting for files to transfer is a minute they're not doing productive work.

Modern businesses need to move large amounts of data quickly and reliably. Design files, video content, database backups, software updates: these aren't small files anymore. If your infrastructure can't handle the load, you're paying the price in lost productivity every single day.