Looking for a recommendation for a Cat5 / Cat6 cable tester

[Steve Gase]

With rain damage, the unprotected cat5 connections seem to be a common failure point.
I've previously been bit by a couple bad cables, too.
So, I'm looking for a decent cable tester that will help me find any likely cable problems.

Without doing this on a daily basis, I imagine the sort of problems that I'd like to discover:

* broken wires
* shorted wires
* swapped wires

In the perfect tool I'd also like to see it tell me how far down the wire is found a short.
I'd also like to see something that would work remotely -- maybe at the end of a 1000' length of cable found in another part of the house.
...and something that would report "partial" shorts where maybe a single strand of wire is not giving 0-resistance, but it still causing me a degree of problems.

I've seen "cable testers" for $5, and I've seen them for several hundreds.  I'd pay more to find problems easier and shorten the time that I spend chasing ghosts, but I don't want to overpay, or miss out one  a good feature that would save me time.

Any suggestions for a product?

Thanks!
Steve

[jnealand]

Mine was about $10 and works just fine.  I had an expensive borrowed one several years ago and it would tell me how long the wire was and what pins were crossed etc, but the bottom line was I still had to cut the end off and replace it which I learn from my $10 tester just as easily.

[chrisatpsu]

if you want to see the distance to a problem in a cable, you're looking for a more expensive tool.  usually a fluke tool.

we had a cable tester from fluke that showd  12345678  and then 12345678
if the connection was through, the number lit up, if there was an open short, the number would be off.
if there was a mismatch, (like plugging in a crossover cable) the affected numbers would flash.

it could also tell us the approx length of the cable (+- a foot or two)

it was able to be a tone generator, and you could use a wand to see which cable at the other end (for customers that didn't label their runs)

and it came with a set of "office identifiers" that you plug into the cable drops, then can test the cables where they come into the switch to see which cable ran where.

i'm sure it was over $800 though

[OkieJay]

Newegg has a number of good units at very reasonable prices.  Search for "cable tester".  I have not used the Rosewills in person, but  friend has had good luck with the RTK-T05.
 

[bwhite505]

I have the one below from Amazon and it works great.  Like others have said even with the expensive testers the end result is still cut the end off and test again. An $800 dollar tester will buy a lot of cable.

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Brian

[inzeos]

It would be a waste of your money to use cat 6 or higher cabling for what we use it for in this hobby.

[Dennis Cherry]

I got this tester, it is all you need for basic testing only.

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[jnealand]

Mine looks like the one Dennis linked to, but I found at a local computer store for around $10 a couple of years ago.

[chrisatpsu]

some places will send you a cable tester when you buy a spool of cable. we used to get so many at work, we'd give them away.

[Steve Gase]

thanks, all for your feedback.  i'll look for something tonight for my wife to use as a stocking stuffer.

[injury]

In a pinch we used to use a multimeter and a pair of the old screwdown RJ45 jacks. Make a loopback and check for resistance, crosses, and shorts.

As far as weather issues I think boots + tape over that should help.

[jeffcoast]

I ended up getting this one after reading some of the reviews of the cheaper ones. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

It is very simple and only cycles through the LEDs, either one by one with the button or it has an auto cycle, so for those long runs where you can't be at both ends. You just have to watch to make sure the LEDs light up in order on both ends. It helped me find a cable where I had switched 1 of the pairs on a couple of the ends, and also showed me 1 wire not getting connection.

I would love to have a nicer one, but didn't see the need for it. I got like 6 more spools of leftover cable from when I helped do some cable runs in a business and had lots of extra at the end that I ended up with.

[deanathpc]

My tester is basic.  LED's light up for good (green) or red (reversal) and if it doesn't light up at all then a short.

Bought it from Home Depot.  called  Sperry TT64202 Cable Tester.  It's yellow.  Can't rember the price though but it wasn't the cheapest nor the most expensive.  But this will allow me to do other cables as well like coax and also phone cables.  It was an investment.