Anyone use a Cat-5 Cable Tester?

[Guest guest]

Just wondering how many folks here that use LOR have invested in a Cat-5 (RJ45/RJ11) cable tester? (It tests phone cables too).



I bought one right after I got into the LOR family, CTB-16PC controllers. And I have had Cat-5 cables go bad, or get a Cat-5 crossocver cable mixed up and in with my other Cat-5 cables.



This little gem(see attached photo below) has saved me a ton and hours of troubleshooting by making sure my cables are working before I install my controllers and after I take them down and put the cables away until the next use.

If you haven't bought or invested in one of these, I find this little item a must have in my LOR arsenal for testing any Cat-5 cables to make sure they are doing their job as required.



I love this handy dandy little item. Keeps all my Cat-5 cables sorted out properly and know which ones I need to replace, repair (when possible) or if it's a crossover(used direct from computer to computer) that doesn't belong in with the LOR Cat-5 cables at all.

I bought mine on E-bay about a year or so ago, at the time I got it on the Buy it Now option for .99 cents and even with shipping it only came to $1.33. Checked E-bay earlier, prices have gone up for the Buy it Now options, but mnay of them are now also including the Cat-5 connector crimp tool.



If you don't have one, I'd really suggest getting one!








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[Guest guest]

Just another photo of the Cat-5 Tester showing how the remote and master can be stored as one piece. As the remote is detachable from the main (Master) unit. See photo in post above for sepration of the two pieces.

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[jimswinder]

I bought one last year...

Have not had to use it yet...

[Dave Batzdorf]

I bought the Ideal one from HD. Works slick and a must for the LOR tool box.

[Paul Roberson]

Yes, I have the exact same tester.

[JBullard]

I agree. A must have for the decorating tool box, along with the Kill-O-Watt

[Guest wbottomley]

JBullard wrote:

I agree.  A must have for the decorating tool box, along with the Kill-O-Watt

WHAT?

John, time for you to buy me another gift, lol.

I look at the wires and say, looks good then connect it to the controller.

[JBullard]

Mountainwxman wrote:

JBullard wrote:

I agree. A must have for the decorating tool box, along with the Kill-O-Watt

WHAT?

John, time for you to buy me another gift, lol.

I look at the wires and say, looks good then connect it to the controller.

What? You mean when I gave you the Kill-O-Watt you didn't see the cable tester also? I've got 2 more of the cable testers, so I guess I'll pack one up and present it to you, when will I see you next?, up in New Jersey in June.

[Guest guest]

JBullard wrote:

I agree. A must have for the decorating tool box, along with the Kill-O-Watt

I still need to invest in one of those too. When I had the funds to buy one locally, seemed all the stores were out of the one I could afford! Always my luck most of the time.:?:shock::{

[Nurples]

I've had my own tester and crimpers for years as I do a lot of networking stuff. I can't believe how much people pay for pre-made CAT5 cables. A box of cable and a small bag of RJ-45's go a long way. And with a little learning, it's very easy to make your cables yourself to whatever length you need.

[Guest guest]

Nurples wrote:

I've had my own tester and crimpers for years as I do a lot of networking stuff. I can't believe how much people pay for pre-made CAT5 cables. A box of cable and a small bag of RJ-45's go a long way. And with a little learning, it's very easy to make your cables yourself to whatever length you need.

I buy my cables on line and the prices are a LOT cheaper than buying cable and making my own.



I buy all my cables here as do many others:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10208



Compared to the local stroes, these are a HUGE bargain. Can't hardly find 75' cables in the retail stores like Lowes or Home Depot and the 50 footers are almost 3 times what you pay for them on the above website.

[Nurples]

Orville wrote:

Nurples wrote:

I've had my own tester and crimpers for years as I do a lot of networking stuff. I can't believe how much people pay for pre-made CAT5 cables. A box of cable and a small bag of RJ-45's go a long way. And with a little learning, it's very easy to make your cables yourself to whatever length you need.

I buy my cables on line and the prices are a LOT cheaper than buying cable and making my own.



I buy all my cables here as do many others:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10208



Compared to the local stroes, these are a HUGE bargain. Can't hardly find 75' cables in the retail stores like Lowes or Home Depot and the 50 footers are almost 3 times what you pay for them on the above website.

That site does have really good prices on pre-made cables. I'm suprised. Although, $75 for 1,000' feet of cable and $5 for 100 connectors seems pretty nice too. I guess I just like to make my own cables.

[Guest guest]

Nurples wrote:

That site does have really good prices on pre-made cables. I'm suprised. Although, $75 for 1,000' feet of cable and $5 for 100 connectors seems pretty nice too. I guess I just like to make my own cables.

Where do you buy your connectors? I've only seen $9.95 for 25 connectors at Staples and other places I've looked have been about the same or higher.



$5.00 for 100 sure beats $10 for 25!



I need to buy some connectors so I can repair or even shorten some of the longer cables I have. That is make 2 or more cables from one 75 footer. Found that the 75' ones were actually WAY longer than I needed, even before I moved to an apartment, 75 footers were still way longer than I had needed at the house and had more coiled up than stretched out. Probably should have bought 50 footers and would have been fine.



But would love to be able to shorten all these 75 footers and even make some very short ones out of them for my displays since I bought extras that I can do this too.



Bulk spools on that site range from around $73 and some change to $121 and some change, but that doesn't include the shipping costs.

[Nurples]

Orville wrote:

Where do you buy your connectors? I've only seen $9.95 for 25 connectors at Staples and other places I've looked have been about the same or higher.



$5.00 for 100 sure beats $10 for 25!

Don't tell anyone, but I don't buy my connectors or cables.

But, I found them 100 for $5 on the same site.

Connector listing:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=105&cp_id=10513&cs_id=1051305



RJ-45 for solid wire (currently out of stock):

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=105&cp_id=10513&cs_id=1051305&p_id=7245&seq=1&format=2

RJ-45 for stranded wire:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=105&cp_id=10513&cs_id=1051305&p_id=7246&seq=1&format=2

[Guest guest]

I knew they had them. Was hoping to find them in a local retail store near me. Ah well. May just spend the $10 for the 25. Had a crimp tool, but it was in my LOR toolbox with all my cable clamps, zip ties, some screw drivers and mounting screws for my LOR Controllers and screws for my cable clamps.

Someone stole it while we were moving into our apartment, set it in front of my vehicle while we were moving some heavier stuff inside, it was only there for less than 10 minutes and some scroundrel walked off with it!:X This happened at 11:45pm at night, box was black and barely visible since it was also sitting basically under the front bumper of my SUV!

[-klb-]

I like the Test Um TP250...

http://www.amazon.com/Test-TP250-Ethernet-Cable-Tester/dp/B000O5WRXY

Plug the cable into the two ends, and it quicly gives you a pass/fail result, and indications of what is correct, or bad..

One thing that it does do that many other cheap ones do not, is split pair detection. Remember, we had someone having issues because they did not have 4,5 as one twisted pair, and 3,6 as a different twisted pair. This tester will catch that, and flag it.

Actually, my wife and I each have one of these, we like them that much. I've actually used some $5,000 cable testers before, but for LOR use, the TP250 is my choice..

[Guest guest]

-klb- wrote:

I like the Test Um TP250...

http://www.amazon.com/Test-TP250-Ethernet-Cable-Tester/dp/B000O5WRXY

Plug the cable into the two ends, and it quicly gives you a pass/fail result, and indications of what is correct, or bad..

One thing that it does do that many other cheap ones do not, is split pair detection. Remember, we had someone having issues because they did not have 4,5 as one twisted pair, and 3,6 as a different twisted pair. This tester will catch that, and flag it.

Actually, my wife and I each have one of these, we like them that much. I've actually used some $5,000 cable testers before, but for LOR use, the TP250 is my choice..

That is easy enough to catch with these cheap testers. If the LED lights don't light up on each unit (master and Remote) in the same sequence at the same time, then you know the cable has issues. If it's a crossover cable, it catches that easy enough too, it display the LED's in reverse on the remote and in numerical sequence on the Master unit.



If the cable is split, and there is no connection in the connectors, those LED's where the wires are missing and not connected don't light up. Cheap, Easy and just as reliable as the more expensive units. Just my opinion, but from my extensive use of the one I bought and posted photo's of, it works very well and catches everything, it just won't flag and hold something, you have to watch the LED lights to make sure the cable is wired correctly So the LED lights will catch everything you stated above, you just have to watch the LED's and make sure everything is wired correctly.

[-klb-]

Split pairs does not refer to a defect in electrical conductivity, or in end to end pinout. Rather it has to do with how the pinout aligns with the geometry of the cable.

An example of a cable with split pairs would be:

1 Orange 1
2 Orange/W 2
3 Blue 3
4 Blue/W 4
5 Green 5
6 Green/W 6
7 Brown 7
8 Brown/W 8

This is a 1 to 1 electrically conductive cable. But it is useless for ethernet, and it throws away any advantage of Cat 6 over silver satin cable. It may in fact act more like an antenna to pick up noise than even the silver satin...



1 Orange 1
2 Orange/W 2
3 Brown 3
4 Blue/W 4
5 Blue 5
6 Brown/W 6
7 Green 7
8 Green/W 8

This second pinout does not look like TIA685A, nor TIA685B, but it has the pairs correctly aligned for Ethernet, or LOR. it is also an electrically conductive 1 to 1 wiring. But, the TP250 will tell you that both cables are electrically conductive 1 to 1, but that the first cable has split pairs, and will not resist electrical noise like the second one will. If you don't have pairs on the correct pins, you may actually be better off just using phone cord.

You have to think about the cable geometry as an antenna in relation to any electrical noise sources in the area. In silver satin, or straight cable, or twisted pair, with split pairs, one wire is likely closer to each noise source for a significant distance. This wire will pick up more of the noise. If the two wires that the electronics think are a pair are twisted around each other, then each wire takes even turns being the one that gets the most noise, and by the far end of the cable, they should have acquired equal noise signals. But, because the receivers for twisted pair applications look at the difference between the two wires, not the actual voltages, your signal has not been degraded. For example, if I sent 1V on one wire and 3V on the other, the difference is 2. If I add 5 volts of identical noise to both, I get 6V and 8V, which is still a difference 2. If they were not wound around each other, alternating which one was closer several times an inch, I might get only 4V of noise in one wire, and 6V of noise in the other, giving me 5V on one, and 9V on the other, for a difference of 4. Definately not what you started with.

[-klb-]

This thread has a real world example of someone who discovered that his home built cables were causing com issues, but the factory ones worked fine:

http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/view_topic.php?id=25177&forum_id=76

He even remade the cable several times, using the same pinout, and got the same problems. Then he switched to making the cables to standard, eliminating the split pairs, and everything worked fine.

Usually, the simple electrical conductivity tester is fine, because the odds are that you will only mess up one wire at a time. And even if you do mess up two, what are the odds that you will make a split pair in the process? But, if you are not sure that you are putting the pairs in the right place, or you have help that claims to know how to make cables correctly, but in fact is only thinking about electrical conductivity, the conductivity tester will not catch it. It will correctly show you that the pinout is in line end to end, but nothing more.

I even worked with someone who should have known better. His experience includes years of lab work, and I think he is at least a CCNP, and may even be a CCIE. But he was having troubles with the gigabit ethernet, and the $6,000 cable test tool kept saying every cable he made was bad. Turns out he had fallen for the fallacy that which wire goes where doesn't matter as long as both ends match.

The $6000 test tool will tell you things like how long your cable is (within a few percent), exactly how much signal leaks out of one pair into every other pair in that cable, and will graph it through frequency. It will tell you how much reflection you are getting at your connectors, and how far down the cable system those connectors are. It will even tell you if the cable has been kinked in the past, and how far down the cable. This stuff all makes a difference when doing high speed data. Not so much for LOR.. But splitting your pairs does matter if you want your cat 5 or cat 6 to work better than silver satin phone cord.

[beeiilll]

I use a testor for my installations of Network cabling in houses and for my display Cat cables as well.
The one I picked up on eBay will do all the basic tests as well as find broken wire lengths which is a real help for troubleshooting in houses when somebody sticks a drywall screw through the Cat cable.

I use mine every year to test my cables as I am doing setup and when I teardown just as a check.
I paid $30 for this one when I got it and see that now they run around $40 and up. Maybe a little expensive but it has paid for itself for me on jobs at least a few times over.

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