In commercial cabling, standards are well established for the testing and certification of structured wiring systems. Business systems are expected to place high demands on installed cabling and a myriad of standards define installation and test requirements. Such networks are "certified" to meet standards. What does this mean?

Certification refers to the process of making measurements and then comparing the results obtained to pre-defined standards, so that a pass/fail determination can be made. In the case of a Category 5E link, for example, a tool such as the Fluke Networks OMNIScanner2® makes thousands of measurements across a bandwidth of 100 MHz, and compares them to complicated formula from agreed-upon standards before an answer can be obtained.