It depends on what you are needing to do. If you are installing new cabling then the cheap $50 from Ebay will work:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/145198295238 If you are working with old existing work then you need a TDR. The reason is because IF the cable you are trying to find with a toner is shorted anywhere on it's length, then the tone generated from the toner will fall off very rapidly in intensity the further you get from the tone source. So you will need to check for a short first. Toners only work well for tracing wire if the end of the wire is not connected to anything. I've used the cheapie to find wires buried in walls behind drywall. The wire was not shorted. The worst would be finding a wire in a wall that had had a nail driven into it. Unless you have a wiring layout for the building, where the wires were run, a TDR will only tell you how far away the nail is, it won't tell you what direction. You just have to get lucky and hope that 1 or 2 conductors are left in the wire that are not shorted. Ted -----Original Message----- From: PLUG <[email protected]> On Behalf Of mo Sent: Monday, January 29, 2024 9:21 AM To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <[email protected]> Subject: [PLUG] Cable tester 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). 🙏🏾
