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Thread: Cheap Cable Certifiers

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    Cheap Cable Certifiers

    Does anybody know any cheap / budget RJ45 cable certifiers? I need one capable of CAT5E and maybe CAT6.


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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    What do you mean by 'cable certifiers'?

    (I'll certify it for you - but I won't be cheap! )
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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    Just certify a RJ45 cable to the standards... If you understand? Loads of people who make cable and fit cable have these as some network managers ask for the reports to see if the job has been to to the standards...


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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    Ah - testers! Not cheap for ones that give you specific performance characteristics. A simple continuity tester (a good one - tests all sorts of PC cables)will only be about £115 but doesn't give any measurement of link capability. for that you will be paying more

    http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/s...duct&R=0369564

    will do some of what you want (but not actually measure cable performance)

    But this will and is reasonable cheap for what it does.

    http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/s...duct&R=0273328

    If you want something more sophisticated..

    http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/s...duct&R=0565009
    Last edited by peterb; 12-04-2009 at 06:49 PM.
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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    If you just want to test that the cable has no breaks in it, you can pick up one of these for well under a tenner.

    Please keep in mind that these do nothing apart from tell you that the cable can carry some kind of an electrical signal. It does nothing in the league that the ones Peter has linked above
    It certainly won't tell you anything about the cables ability to carry a digital signal.

    Having said that I use one and it has been useful when making up cables. None of mine are mission critical though.

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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    I have one of them, the one under a £10... I am 15 and I fit cables pretty often, and I will be studying networking in college in September hence the cheap needs.


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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    Or you can plug the two ends into a couple of switches and check you get a link established - but again won't give any indication of link quality.
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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    I know this may seem a silly question, but is they any software say you plug the cable into a laptop and software determines the link quality?


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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    Physical layer stuff is generally handled in the NIC itself so you're unlikely to get much info exposed to you through the driver... so i'd say no, unless you're using a special hw/sw combo, in which case you've just forked out on a tester
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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    Some BIOS's are starting to expose this info a little more, but certainly nothing on the level of the testers above.

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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    Not even on a software level within the host operating system?


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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    From the manufactures point of view, there really isn't any point.

    If the cable isn't up to the job, they'll just tell you to buy a new cable. Writing the software to expose things on that level (Assuming the hardware even has the diagnostic ability) is going to cost money, which is going to be passed along to you.
    When you consider that a huge amount of networks cards made will be used for watching porn and chatting on MSN, there really isn't any point for them to do this - hence the cost of the items Peter linked

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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    What about the Intel Server NICs?

    I know they used to come with really good diagnostics utilities

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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    Quote Originally Posted by Funkstar View Post
    What about the Intel Server NICs?

    I know they used to come with really good diagnostics utilities
    The ones I saw only dealt with things like cable length, number of errors etc...
    Certainly better than nothing, but the ones Peter linked are far in excess of this.

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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    I know, wouldn't it be more rational if I had a laptop with a really advanced NIC which could diagnose the link. This would save a lot of money if you would carry a netbook around with you.

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    Re: Cheap Cable Certifiers

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    The ones I saw only dealt with things like cable length, number of errors etc...
    Certainly better than nothing, but the ones Peter linked are far in excess of this.
    It would be good (not for me, i have no use for this) if there was a USB version of the ones Peter linked to, giving you a large screen for the data and more sophisticated logging etc.

    It would still be expensive, and you would need a laptop as well, but it would be cool

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