Cheap software-based CAT6 cable analyzer/certifier?

[thefreeaccount]

Are there any software products that will allow you to use a computer to do CAT6 cable testing/certification? The hardware products are a bit out of my reach at $1,000 to start.

 

[Skud]

The closest i've seen is bundled with intel NICs. Go into the adapter properties and you can do a cables test along with testing the cable frequency response and quality. Doesn't give much information other than a slider that ranges bad to good. Also gives an estimated cable length.

Riley

 

[ghost6303]

the problem with this is that you need some sort of transceiver on the other end of the cable that knows to bounce the signal back to the tester. a regular hub or switch doesnt know to do this. the Intel software (last i saw) only gives a "good" or "no good" analysis. a real cable tester will tell you if pairs are swapped, a single wire is broken, latency is too high, etc.

if you had two network cards in your PC and plug a cable between them, it should be possible to get a piece of software that tests all of that, but i have not seen something like this.

 

[stiltner]

Are there any software products that will allow you to use a computer to do CAT6 cable testing/certification? The hardware products are a bit out of my reach at $1,000 to start.

Ummm, are you just looking to test quality? WTF you get 1k from?

http://www.amazon.com/Paladin-Tools...HL8M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298424435&sr=8-1

I'll take the remaining $974 you have leftover as a finders fee.

 

[compslckr]

That POS paladin does not test quality at all. All it will tell you is if you punched down the wires in the same order on both ends.


droooool...... http://www.amazon.com/Fluke-CABLE-A...V6CI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298425481&sr=8-1

you can pretty easily get close to $20k if you start looking at fiber certification units http://www.amazon.com/Fluke-DTX-180...PI/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1298425481&sr=8-15

Don't forget fiber termination tools: http://www.google.com/products/cata...log_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CEoQ8wIwAA


We have the Fluke CableIQ at work, and to be honest it was a waste of $1,000. All it really does is glorified wiremap and distance estimation. It will not actually certify cables, or do in-depth performance test. If I was going back and purchasing a cable tester again, I would have requested something in the DTX series.

Here is the link to the CableIQ
http://www.amazon.com/Fluke-CABLEIQ...ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1298425728&sr=1-1

 

[Macco]

We use the JDSU T-Berd 4000 at work, a bit cheaper then the Fluke models but still pretty expensive after adding in the modules to do Ethernet, Fiber, S/TDM, VoIP/IPTV testing. There's a lots of cheaper tools out there that will do wire mapping, tdr, etc - if you actually want to measure NEXT/FEXT etc you'll have to drop the money and buy a unit or have someone come in and do it.

 

[thefreeaccount]

Thanks a lot for your responses. It's frustrating that what used to be a simple do-it-yourself task now has such a high barrier to entry.