OT : I have a home network with about 30 hard wired Cat5e and Cat6 sockets that were all wired professionally. Recently, I have been cleaning up my patch panel and making up some new patch cords. It's been a great learning experience. I have been cutting down some existing patch cables and re-terminating them. In doing this, I have found a bunch of very suspect cables. I watched your video on testing cables; specifically, on how twisting / un-twisting can affect performance. But, undoubtedly, your equipment is far too expensive for a home user with a limited number of cable to test. Can you suggest a cable performance tester that might be a bit more home user price friendly ?
Hello David! Ugh. That is a thorny question if spending money is an issue. The tester I am using is a Fluke DSX-8000 and fully kitted out to test patch cords in addition to permanent links it will cost you well north of $15K. The next step down is $2,100 for a Fluke LinkIQ, which will work well enough for home users and weekend warrior installers, but not professionals who actually need to Certify cable. The Fluke LinkIQ is cable "qualifier" that performs a pretty accurate analysis and speed test. Anything less than that is essentially a "blinky tester" (wire map tester) that only confirms conductor wiring sequence but tells you nothing about performance. There are wire map testers that cost from $10 to $150 but they all do the same thing basic thing: confirm wire map. Some add a rather inaccurate cable length test and other potentially useful features like a toner for figuring out what cable is what in a bundle, but the ability to actually measure cable and termination quality/speed starts at $2,100.
OT : I have a home network with about 30 hard wired Cat5e and Cat6 sockets that were all wired professionally. Recently, I have been cleaning up my patch panel and making up some new patch cords. It's been a great learning experience. I have been cutting down some existing patch cables and re-terminating them. In doing this, I have found a bunch of very suspect cables. I watched your video on testing cables; specifically, on how twisting / un-twisting can affect performance. But, undoubtedly, your equipment is far too expensive for a home user with a limited number of cable to test. Can you suggest a cable performance tester that might be a bit more home user price friendly ?
Hello David! Ugh. That is a thorny question if spending money is an issue. The tester I am using is a Fluke DSX-8000 and fully kitted out to test patch cords in addition to permanent links it will cost you well north of $15K. The next step down is $2,100 for a Fluke LinkIQ, which will work well enough for home users and weekend warrior installers, but not professionals who actually need to Certify cable. The Fluke LinkIQ is cable "qualifier" that performs a pretty accurate analysis and speed test. Anything less than that is essentially a "blinky tester" (wire map tester) that only confirms conductor wiring sequence but tells you nothing about performance. There are wire map testers that cost from $10 to $150 but they all do the same thing basic thing: confirm wire map. Some add a rather inaccurate cable length test and other potentially useful features like a toner for figuring out what cable is what in a bundle, but the ability to actually measure cable and termination quality/speed starts at $2,100.
Pink or Rose? 😂
Hello. TIA ANSI/TIA-598-D - Optical Fiber Cable Color Coding Standard refers to it as ROSE.