Why you might need a tester when doing cabling

[DNose]

I have done about 5-6 cable jobs with 30-50 drops each without testers.
The last job was not so lucky one of the guys cut all the wires to patch them in to the panel and forgot they were marked on the ends. I didn?t know what happened I just saw my co-worker screaming and cursing himself out. Yeah the realization started to set in we had know clue where any of the cables went to what rooms. Opps!

We examined the cables and matched them by the print on the side of the cables and the angle of the cuts. It was not easy but shocking it worked. Yeah we got lucky.

So this time I want to be a little more prepared. I went to Fry?s to get a Fox & hound then I saw a paladin tool that had a cable tester and a tone gen. This looks like a cool concept. I also don?t have a cable tester. $109 vs $80 for the paladin. http://www.paladin-tools.com/view_tool.php?id=236

I don't have any experience to refer to so could anybody help.

Not sure of paladin maybe I'm better with something else.

 

[spidey07]

In all honesty if you are doing this for money you should be certifying each and every cable to category spec. If you don't you don't have category anything cable, just a bunch of copper.

Look to fluke for anything you need.

One tip - you can always tone the cable in your instance.

 

[mcveigh]

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SS35407-TEST&cpc=SCH

I use this just to see if anything is reversed, it's cheap and has identified many easy to fix problems.
others will scream bloody murder for using it but it helps me.
now I hate laying cable so I always use a guy I know who a professional phone and network installer. let him crawl around in ceilings...

 

[DNose]

Spidey07

I did not mean to say, I am self-contracting or something.
I am an employee I do what I am told most of the time.

My understanding of a certifiers is that it does not make your cable any better it just tells you what it is.

I?m looking for basic recommended tools from experience not what brands exist.

 

[cmetz]

DNose, go get a Fluke cable scanner with certification capability. They're not that expensive.

You NEED a tester, because it tells you whether you installed things within spec or not. If you don't pay for a tester and the man-time to use it, you'll just pay for repair calls later.

It is also useful for customer relations because anyone who doesn't test their work is an amateur. So when your customers see you actually testing they'll be more inclined to percieve you as professionals, while if they don't see that they shouldn't.

 

[DaiShan]

I've had very mixed results with tone generators. I've got a fluke tone gen and amplifier probe that I've had to use on a few occassions (80-100 cables in a conduit not marked in any way) and it wasn't very conclusive as to which cable the tone was coming in on. But, yes you do need a good tester.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: DaiShan
I've had very mixed results with tone generators. I've got a fluke tone gen and amplifier probe that I've had to use on a few occassions (80-100 cables in a conduit not marked in any way) and it wasn't very conclusive as to which cable the tone was coming in on. But, yes you do need a good tester.

That should tell you the cable wasn't installed properly.

Right off the bat. something is very wrong with that cable. Toners (fox/hound) are very clear.

Sorry if I'm being so adamant about this, but it's the singular most important part of any network - the physical cable plant.

I just recently had an issue that I was called in on. There was a 15 second outage in network communications (costing about 100K for that outage). I started at the physical layer and reviewed their grounding (first thing to look at in data centers). Sure enough it wasn't up to spec and there was noise.

Follow the EIA/TIA or die in a sea of frustration.

 

[skyking]

If you are just tagging, the proper method is to put the tone generator in the remote jack. Use a proper adapter, don't jsut stick a RJ11 male into your RJ45 jacks. It will bend some of the 1/8 conductors in the jack, and give you headaches and failed tests.
With the tone on, your partner in the switch closet can find the corresponding jack and you can tag it.
After tagging, test your plant as Spidey and cmetz have suggested. Crap cable plants are great for overtime and pissed off workers, and not much else.

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: DaiShan
I've had very mixed results with tone generators. I've got a fluke tone gen and amplifier probe that I've had to use on a few occassions (80-100 cables in a conduit not marked in any way) and it wasn't very conclusive as to which cable the tone was coming in on. But, yes you do need a good tester.

That should tell you the cable wasn't installed properly.

Right off the bat. something is very wrong with that cable. Toners (fox/hound) are very clear.

Sorry if I'm being so adamant about this, but it's the singular most important part of any network - the physical cable plant.

I just recently had an issue that I was called in on. There was a 15 second outage in network communications (costing about 100K for that outage). I started at the physical layer and reviewed their grounding (first thing to look at in data centers). Sure enough it wasn't up to spec and there was noise.

Follow the EIA/TIA or die in a sea of frustration.

Hey, you won't get any arguments from me on that. We generally stay away from cabling unless it's part of a much larger project, in which case we'll sub-contract it out.

 

[DNose]

I?m looking at a fluke tester IntelliTone Pro Toner and Probe for about $180. But it?s not a certifier.

http://www.flukenetworks.com/fnet/en-us...ycode=INET&PID=50015&categorycode=LANT

The Fluke certifiers that I found on their site are around $1000. I have a budget of $300 for what ever makes the job better for the costumer and me both. Yeah maybe this job will not be done to specs but hopefully by the next one I will be able to afford the certifier. The boss is the one who will have to do the server maintenance. I am making the effort, trying to do it the right way.
Thanks for all the suggestions.

The search for the right tool at the right price continues.

 

[ch33zw1z]

fluke > *!!!

If you can't afford a fluke after doing 5 or 6 cabling jobs...you're not charging enough.

 

[DNose]

Originally posted by: DNose
I?m looking at a fluke tester IntelliTone Pro Toner and Probe for about $180. But it?s not a certifier.

http://www.flukenetworks.com/fnet/en-us...ycode=INET&PID=50015&categorycode=LANT

The Fluke certifiers that I found on their site are around $1000. I have a budget of $300 for what ever makes the job better for the costumer and me both. Yeah maybe this job will not be done to specs but hopefully by the next one I will be able to afford the certifier. The boss is the one who will have to do the server maintenance. I am making the effort, trying to do it the right way.
Thanks for all the suggestions.

The search for the right tool at the right price continues.

I said I am an employee.

I wanted talk about tools. Tools for beginners or for someone that does not cable that often. knowing that you should own a certifier.

Looks like I?m not going to find any answers in this trend thanks anyways.

 

[cheesecurd]

Don't despair, the two most important tools you can have are common sense and a Fox/Hound set. I work for a sizable ISP/phone company, I've not once used a Fluke or any other fancy tester and I have yet to run into a situation where I needed one (yes, they can be helpful, but I don't find them necessary).

If the cable don't work, I put new ends in it (99% of the problems solved). I've already used the first tool, common sense, when running the cable -- avoid wrapping it around fluorescent lights and other sources of electrical interference. Don't run anything over 300 feet. Don't stress the cable.

A Fox/Hound is great for the situation you ran into, or any other time you need to track down where a cable runs and/or terminates. Near the ends of your cables identify them every 2-3 feet for at least 6 feet (I use a Sharpie), that way you know what's what the next time someone cuts then ends off without thinking (it WILL happen again).

 

[InlineFive]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread.

I'm having problems with a bunch of Ethernet-based Credit Card Terminals that are having issues with dropped connections and timeouts. The rest of the network stays up so I'm narrowing it down to the CCMs and their cabling. The guys who installed the cable were the people the boss likes and I'm not sure if they did anything up to standards.

Is a tone generator a versatile enough tool to test the cables for imperfections? And will it be practical for testing other cabling jobs in the future? Or is it's use very limited?

Thanks!

 

[ch33zw1z]

Tone Generators are simply that. One device generates the tone, another receives it. It's more for locating where cables are in the huge amounts of cables used in todays networks.

You will need a cable tester. again, something like a fluke that will test the cables for mappings, noise measurements, etc...

If it's only those CC terms giving you issues, you may want to look into firmware updates for the devices.