For years, we got away with a cheapo $20 continuity tester for checking Ethernet cables. The problem with them was that, yeah, sure, they would tell you if you had shorts or opens, but they did not tell you where. Cable itself tends to be pretty reliably connected end to end, but when you have crimped both ends and you find a short or open with a continuity tester, you have almost no idea which end you screwed up. You look very closely at the crimped ends, decide which one looks sketchier, cut it off and try again more carefully, then rinse and repeat.
A few years ago, after suffering this problem for over a decade, we finally invested in a fluke microscanner2. It does time domain reflectometry, and can tell you, pair-by-pair, whether it has continuity and crucially, if it does not, how far down the wire the fault occurs. Suddenly, we know which end has the fault! If we stabbed the cable to death with hoop staples and there is a mid span fault, we know that. It cost us $500. It wasn't their fanciest model, but it has been such an improvement in reliability and visibility. -- Russell Senior [email protected] On Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 09:21 mo <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi. I need to buy a cat5 cable tester aka tone detector. There are so many! > How should I choose one? What features, brands, etc do you recommend? > > My bldg has up to 100' of cat5e I think. I'd like one I keep for future use > with different wiring (RJ11, cat6 7, etc). Idk what other features to look > for in such an item. I want to test for cable quality, connectivity, speed, > etc as well as locating which cable terminates where (if all that's > possible). 🙏🏾 >
