Pocket Ethernet and Network Tester

There have been some updates, I'm just getting up-to-speed on them now.

A type of remote terminator device will be included, and some IOS support for those with iPhones (prior it was Android-only) - apparently IOS needs Bluetooth v4.

They have a short physical/electrical spec (not much there):

90x65x25 mm | 200 g | Micro-USB charge | 8 hours operating time on battery
Voltage measurement up to 110V | Input protection | TDR range up to 400m

Ok, so I'll ask the obvious.  This is an Ethernet cable tester ?  Ethernet cable installed to spec shouldn't be over 100m, 90m fixed and two 5m patch cables.  So why a 400m TDR ?  Wouldn't 150m be a better range, especially if you can be more accurate that way.  If the TDR can't find the end/fault then you know what's wrong - your installation is out of spec!

I realise it's never quite so black and white, and that ethernet may work on longer cable - but you should not be planning on installing something like that.

I wondered why too : ) Probably a technical limitation of the tool rather than a practically experienced one. I've been in situations where the building is huge but where 100m should be ok, but since it traverses to patchrooms and back the 100m is exceeded and it's often not known with existing cabling without invoking the built-in TDR in switches. So an idea on length is good, but 400m does seem excessive : ) I suppose it may be possible to figure out the length of cable on a huge drum (don't know if that's a likely or unlikely use-case for installers or not - personally I'd measure out an amount of cable if it was going to be long, and hence know what's left).

Typically 305m / 1000ft on a reel, so that's possible. Having to terminate the cable would seem to make it less likely.

If it's a decent TDR, it should really be able to tell you where it sees 'features' in the cable. That ought to get you to things like where the discontinuities at patch panels are, or to things like a cable being cable tied to a metal tray tightly enough that some sharp bit of metal has pierced the cable and is shorted to just one conductor of the pair - but no actual break.

Not being able to do stuff like that means your cable fault finder just isn't very good, no matter the manufacturer...

Of course it's also possible that the TDR device they're using has good accuracy out to some silly distance just because of general improvements in the technology, but we'd need to know more than just range to even guess if that's the case.  Would you rather have 400m range, +-4m accuracy, or, 100m +-1m ?  Yes, of course, 400m +-10cm would be even better

From what I see this has some advantages over a normal cable checker.

As a Cat 5/6 tester its lacking the crosstalk and loss checks which identify the problems with a terminated cable.

Cables need to be run and fastened before being tested to ensure they comply with bending radius and other parts of the spec.

They talk about cable quality, but then only give details about biterror rates (and not how it does the testing)

I suspect it's aimed at the 'smart wiring' brigade, who are using ethernet cable to run the services over.

Some of the checks can be done with a laptop (" DHCP, DNS, Ping, Traceroute tests (10/100) ") and why not at 1000 ...?. which you'd probably need to make changes anyway.

The cable tracing and open pairs only work if the device you're plugged into presents a loading on the pairs, and unless the termination is intelligent its unlikely to identify swapped pairs.

(I see they show a device plugged into the fully terminated cable before the 'broken' wiring)

I usually have a look on the cable to see how much is left ... the distance is marked on it.

Yes the commercial devices are large (and expensive) but they are certified (which you need) and provide some other features useful when two people are running through the tests ie voice communication and pass/fail audio tone to know when to swap cables (useful when you have 50-100 run and terminated cables to test).

Ours have the ability to add location and cable to the results and are downloadable by connecting to a laptop/computer.

IMO, as an advanced cable checker it's probably good value, but not as a replacement for a proper cat5/6 tester.

Mark

From what I see this has some advantages over a normal cable checker.

As a Cat 5/6 tester its lacking the crosstalk and loss checks which identify the problems with a terminated cable.

Cables need to be run and fastened before being tested to ensure they comply with bending radius and other parts of the spec.

They talk about cable quality, but then only give details about biterror rates (and not how it does the testing)

I suspect it's aimed at the 'smart wiring' brigade, who are using ethernet cable to run the services over.

Some of the checks can be done with a laptop (" DHCP, DNS, Ping, Traceroute tests (10/100) ") and why not at 1000 ...?. which you'd probably need to make changes anyway.

The cable tracing and open pairs only work if the device you're plugged into presents a loading on the pairs, and unless the termination is intelligent its unlikely to identify swapped pairs.

(I see they show a device plugged into the fully terminated cable before the 'broken' wiring)

I usually have a look on the cable to see how much is left ... the distance is marked on it.

Yes the commercial devices are large (and expensive) but they are certified (which you need) and provide some other features useful when two people are running through the tests ie voice communication and pass/fail audio tone to know when to swap cables (useful when you have 50-100 run and terminated cables to test).

Ours have the ability to add location and cable to the results and are downloadable by connecting to a laptop/computer.

IMO, as an advanced cable checker it's probably good value, but not as a replacement for a proper cat5/6 tester.

Mark

Hi Mark,

I think you're right, good as a general tool, not for commercial installers. I've been in some awful locations where people have been stepping on cables, wires are strung across racks etc. (so bad I had to take a photo - see below), so here such a tool would have saved a lot of time and headache! : ) For me this was the worst I'd ever seen : )

mcb1 wrote:

 

As a Cat 5/6 tester its lacking [...]  and why not at 1000 ...?.

 

With Cat6 you could be running 10G... Now 10G copper is new enough that it's going to be expensive, but not having 1G today is particularly odd.

  they usually start off like the first photo, but it takes discipline to keep them that way.  I have a colleague whos purpose in life is to make the second photo seem neat

you mean like this

<html><head><title>Jive SBS</title></head>
<body><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
<b>Error</b><br><font size="-1">
An general error occurred while processing your request.
</font></font></body></html>

To be fair, it was during migration to new servers and distribution frames, however they are ALL unlabeled.

and no this is the IT departments wiring not our operational stuff.