Network Infrastructure
7 Signs Your Indianapolis Office Network Needs a Cabling Upgrade
Most Indianapolis businesses don't think about their cabling infrastructure until something breaks. By that point, the problem has usually been quietly degrading performance — and productivity — for months or years. The good news: the warning signs are almost always there before a full failure. Here are seven of the most common ones we see when we walk into a facility for the first time.
Your Network Speeds Don't Match What You're Paying For
If your ISP is delivering 1 Gbps to your building but workstations are seeing 100 Mbps or less, the bottleneck is almost certainly your internal cabling. CAT5 and early CAT5e installations — common in Indianapolis offices built or wired before 2005 — are physically incapable of supporting gigabit speeds at the workstation level. You're paying for bandwidth your infrastructure can't deliver.
Intermittent Drops and Unexplained Disconnections
Cables that were installed quickly, bent too sharply around corners, or damaged over time develop micro-fractures in the copper conductors. The result is a connection that works fine most of the time but drops under load or at random intervals. These faults are notoriously difficult to diagnose without proper cable testing equipment — and they're almost impossible to fix without replacing the affected runs.
You're Running CAT5 or Early CAT5e
CAT5 cable — the standard through the late 1990s and early 2000s — is rated for 100 Mbps. That was fine in 2001. In 2026, with cloud-based applications, video conferencing, VoIP, and large file transfers running simultaneously, 100 Mbps per workstation is a serious constraint. If your Indianapolis office was wired before 2005 and hasn't been upgraded, there's a good chance you're still running CAT5.
Your Server Room or IDF Looks Like a Plate of Spaghetti
Disorganized cabling isn't just an aesthetic problem. Unlabeled cables, tangled runs, and improvised patch jobs make troubleshooting exponentially harder and increase the risk of accidental disconnections during maintenance. More importantly, poor cable management often indicates that the underlying infrastructure was installed without proper documentation — which means you may not know what's actually running where.
You've Added Workstations by Daisy-Chaining Switches
When an office runs out of wall jacks, the quick fix is to plug a cheap unmanaged switch into an existing jack and connect multiple devices to it. This works in the short term but creates a cascaded network topology that degrades performance, introduces latency, and creates security blind spots. If your office has switches plugged into switches plugged into other switches, your cabling infrastructure hasn't kept pace with your headcount.
You're Deploying PoE Devices and Experiencing Heat or Power Issues
Power over Ethernet (PoE) devices — IP phones, wireless access points, security cameras, and smart building sensors — draw power through the cable itself. Older CAT5 and CAT5e installations weren't designed for sustained PoE loads. Running high-wattage PoE++ devices over aging cable generates heat, degrades performance, and can shorten the life of both the cable and the connected devices. CAT6 and CAT6A handle PoE loads significantly better.
Your Building Has Been Renovated or Expanded
Renovations are one of the most common causes of cabling damage. Walls get opened, cable gets cut, conduit gets rerouted, and the documentation — if it existed at all — becomes inaccurate. If your Indianapolis office has been through a significant renovation in the past several years and your cabling wasn't part of the project scope, it's worth having a professional assessment to verify what you actually have.
What to Do If You Recognize These Signs
The first step is a professional cabling assessment — not a quote, not a sales call, but an honest evaluation of what you have and what it would take to bring it up to current standards. We do these for free throughout Indianapolis and Central Indiana.
We'll test your existing cable runs, document what's in place, identify the specific failure points, and give you a clear picture of your options — whether that's targeted repairs, a phased upgrade, or a full recabling project. You'll leave the conversation knowing exactly what you're dealing with, not guessing.
We've been doing this work in Indianapolis since 1999. We know what a 20-year-old CAT5 installation looks like, and we know how to fix it efficiently without disrupting your operations.
Free Cabling Assessment — Indianapolis & Central Indiana
We'll test your existing infrastructure and tell you exactly what you have — and what it would take to fix it.