2005–2018 – When Control Ruled the Wide Area Network: The Age of MPLS Dominance
There was a time when enterprise networks were not free. They were planned, engineered, contract-bound, and predictable down to the last detail. Between roughly 2005 and 2018, this way of thinking shaped global enterprise connectivity almost completely – and with it, one technology that became nearly without alternative: MPLS. Multiprotocol Label Switching was not simply […]
2015 – Mobile First in the Enterprise: The Moment Wired Networks Began to Lose Control
AI is no longer a promise of the future. It is reality. And it is reshaping IT operations faster than many teams expected. Yet the real cultural rupture inside the enterprise did not begin with artificial intelligence. It began a decade earlier, in 2015, when companies finally accepted that work was no longer bound to […]
The New Wireless Powers How Enterprise WLAN Became a Multi-Dominant Market (2022–2026)
After 2022, Enterprise WLAN is no longer shaped by a single technological revolution, but by a new market order. Wireless is established, accepted, deeply embedded in working environments, production sites, educational institutions and public infrastructures. While WLAN continues to evolve functionally, the vendor landscape shifts at the same time. What was once a two-pole world […]
Wireless LAN as a Business TechnologyFrom Cisco Dominance to a Multi-Vendor Battlefield (2005 – 2022)
When wireless LAN finally became a mission-critical enterprise technology, one name stood at the center of that transformation from the very beginning. Cisco. In the early and mid-2000s, enterprise WLAN meant controller-based architectures, centralized management, Aironet access points and scalable campus designs. Cisco did not simply participate in this market phase, it shaped expectations. Wireless […]
Corporate Networks Go WirelessHow WLAN Became the Backbone of Modern Business (2005–Today)
The network left the cable tray. And it never came back. What started as a convenience feature for conference rooms slowly turned into the backbone of modern enterprise IT. Around 2005, wireless LAN stopped being a secondary access layer and became real infrastructure. Laptops replaced stationary desktops, offices lost their fixed ports, work became mobile. […]
The Internet Learns to Think – Routing Protocols, MPLS and the Age of Programmable Networks (2000–Today)
When professional routers had secured their place in the world’s data centers at the end of the 1990s, the internet had finally become stable. But stability alone was no longer enough. Data traffic grew faster than any plan, companies expanded globally, providers connected continents, and applications became more complex, more sensitive, more critical. Networks no […]
Professional Routing Begins – How Cisco Turned Networks into Global Infrastructure (1995–2000)
In the mid-1990s, digital networks reached a point where improvisation was no longer sufficient. While switching had already brought structure to local networks, the connection between networks remained a technical workaround for far too long. Routing existed, but it was fragmented, expensive, difficult to manage, and most of all, not standardized. It was precisely at […]
Switching & Routing – The Nervous System of Digital Networks (1985–1995)How Hubs and Early Switches Created the First Rules of Digital Traffic
Between 1985 and 1995, the foundation of what we now call the nervous system of digital networks was formed. This period was not about comfort, not about security, not about high availability. It was about bringing order into rapidly growing digital structures. Networks expanded, more computers were connected, the first corporate networks emerged, but data […]
2000 to Today Fiber and the Acceleration of the Digital World
When fiber optics first entered corporate networks in the early 2000s, it still felt like a technology from a distant future. Copper cabling was everywhere, server rooms ran reliably on twisted pair, and gigabit Ethernet seemed fast enough for almost any business application. But beneath the surface, something fundamental was shifting. Data volumes were exploding […]
1980–2000 – From Coax to Structured Cabling: How Physical Infrastructure Became the Backbone of Digital Business
When the first corporate networks emerged in the early 1980s, infrastructure was above all one thing: improvised. Thick coaxial cables wound their way through offices, were daisy-chained from computer to computer, connected with T-connectors, poorly documented and barely secured. If a single connection failed, half the network often went down with it. And yet, it […]