( 1 reviews )
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Posted: Dec 9 2007
This blows away the Microtest unit I used to use. The CableIQ is all you need to troubleshoot, diagnose, and qualify ethernet cabling. That's "qualify", not "certify". This unit gives you a good real-world determination of what a cable run is good for - but doesn't quite fulfill full ISO and TSA certification requirements contractors require to legally certify a job. It's weakness is results entry and advanced network mapping - making this best suited for the network admin or network installer working on discrete runs or spot jobs (i.e. can't use this to certify and report a big thousand port installation - but for day to day network run/patch troubleshoots, diags, and installs it's the BEST). The CableIQ unit is compact and quick and easy to use and very very powerful. If you select "Discover" it will immediately tell you length and topology of the wire you're plugged into. It will tell you if it's live Ethernet (and what speed), or if it's POE, or telephone. Telephone ring current and POE can give you a nasty shock, so it's great to know when a wire you're about to work on has live current. The IQ will warn you with a lightning bolt symbol as well as exact ID. When terminating or troubleshooting it will tell you if there's a short or an open - and on which wires and how far down the wire. Set it to "AutoTest" and it will qualify - i.e. tell you what uses the cable run will work for (i.e. will it work for POE, Gigabit, VOIP, or only 100baseT?) AutoTest requires a transponder at the far end of the run. The CableIQ's one included transponder allows you to rapidly test and qualify up a run - and you can buy more separately to all you to multiple runs in one pass without having to go to the other end to move the transponder. This is great for labeling and identifying ports, as well as telling you if that patch or termination is good - or has to be reterminated. The weak link is the "Results" setting - which allows you to save your test results - but (as is typical in this class of device) labeling your results requires a lot of fiddling with the navigation buttons to input text. The alternative is to have a much larger unit with a full keyboard. I'll take the compact unit and note the results another way rather than suffer through this kind of entry. If you must provide electronic records and label a lot of certification results you should get a bigger unit with better text entry. You can download your test results to a PC via the USB port BTW. The CableIQ is used to tone and find runs by setting it on "Tone" and then using the Intellitone 100 probe to seek (this SKU doesn't include an Intellitone probe - so you'll need to buy one separately - a worthwhile investment since you WILL need to tone - guaranteed). You can use up to 4 different tones (2 normal, and 2 variable) so you can several teams working at the same time . The probe has two different levels of sensitivity so you can set it to max sensitivity to find which bundle has your wire, then set it to low sensitivity to find exactly which one of those wires in the bundle is yours. The tip of the probe fits into patch panels just fine. Toning out runs is fine - but the CableIQ shuts off after 15 minutes to save the battery, which can be inconvenient at times - just FYI. Also this tone rig doesn't have a convenient way to work with 110 or 66 punchdown blocks. You can always craft a test wire that has RJ45 at one end and alligator clips at the other (or bare wire to manually punch in) - but that's not included and isn't in this device's core competency. The CableIQ rig makes you ready for whatever network data wire work that comes your way (except for fiber channel, of course) - as long as the wire is terminated with RJ45/11 or F coax. Since - there's no alligator clips or 66/110 block attachments it's not the tool for old fashioned telco punchdown testing. For modern data networking it's the weapon of choice. Highly recommended.
