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[Riley Casey]

A local venue has installed some Cat 5E or Cat 6  cable for use on a specific show that we have traditionally pulled our own fiber for.  I need to test this for suitability for Dante networking, essentially that it will support Gigabit ethernet.  Some Googling around points to some utilities including one resident on Mac OSX that should confirm this. I plan to park my computer at one end of the line and one of the switches we use for Dante at the other end and run the utility.  Any reason to think this would not suffice to tell me if this will support the show?  Thanks for any pointers.

[John Penkala]

A local venue has installed some Cat 5E or Cat 6  cable for use on a specific show that we have traditionally pulled our own fiber for.  I need to test this for suitability for Dante networking, essentially that it will support Gigabit ethernet.  Some Googling around points to some utilities including one resident on Mac OSX that should confirm this. I plan to park my computer at one end of the line and one of the switches we use for Dante at the other end and run the utility.  Any reason to think this would not suffice to tell me if this will support the show?  Thanks for any pointers.

Riley,
       I'm very interested as to what you find as one of my clients is adding a CL5 and a pair of RIO boxes to their system.  Although not on a Dante network, I have used a connection utility in the Auvitran software for Ethersound. It monitors the quality of the connection in real-time. If the Dante control software has a utility like that, you could run it day of show making sure that you have enough time to run your fiber if it fails the test. I don't blame you if you want to know before the day of the show and don't want to drag a console and stage box in beforehand. This is assuming a utility like that even exists for Dante. Sorry, if I muddied the water. Let us know what you find out!

JP

[Scott Helmke]

I use a Black Box TS580A "LAN Performance Verifier" to test and verify category performance of all the Ethernet cables we use for digital audio.

[Samuel Rees]

What utility are you looking at? I'd like to test some cat lines, but don't have a place in the business model for for some kind of dedicated hardware. I've got a Mac, also.

[Riley Casey]

Network utility in the .. Utilities folder as it turns out.  It correctly identifies 1000 Mb versus 100 Mb switches in the shop but I have no idea if it's simply reading a tag in the switch hardware at the end of the line or genuinely determining that the connection will reliably support Gigabit traffic.

What utility are you looking at? I'd like to test some cat lines, but don't have a place in the business model for for some kind of dedicated hardware. I've got a Mac, also.

[Erik Jerde]

Network utility in the .. Utilities folder as it turns out.  It correctly identifies 1000 Mb versus 100 Mb switches in the shop but I have no idea if it's simply reading a tag in the switch hardware at the end of the line or genuinely determining that the connection will reliably support Gigabit traffic.

It's just reporting that it successfully negotiated a gigabit connection which is pretty basic.  There is no performance guarantee and no testing of the line (beyond very basic stuff) involved. 

If you want to truly verify the connection you'll need specialized test equipment which runs fancy measurements on the wire.  I would at least verify that it's wired correctly, a cheap tester should accomplish that.

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

In short:

You can't confirm infrastructure quality without something like this:

http://www.flukenetworks.com/enterprise-network/network-testing/CableIQ-Qualification-Tester

Software products can't tell you very much because they only operate above the physical layer - they are up in Layer 4-7 of the OSI model.
To really tell whats going on with your cable, you're interested in the physical and electrical properties

Even though testers like this are not cheap, they are typically a small investment when you compare it to the financial risk on a show which relies on cat copper or fibre tech (fibre variants exist also)

[Mac Kerr]

In short:

You can't confirm infrastructure quality without something like this:

http://www.flukenetworks.com/enterprise-network/network-testing/CableIQ-Qualification-Tester

Software products can't tell you very much because they only operate above the physical layer - they are up in Layer 4-7 of the OSI model.
To really tell whats going on with your cable, you're interested in the physical and electrical properties

Even though testers like this are not cheap, they are typically a small investment when you compare it to the financial risk on a show which relies on cat copper or fibre tech (fibre variants exist also)

Chris, do you know what the Black Box tester doesn't do relative to the Fluke to justify the $1300 price difference? Does it really matter? This is an issue I hope to have to deal with more and more as I get to use network based audio systems more and more, and I probably should have a tester, but don't want to spend more than I need to.

Mac

[Tim McCulloch]

Chris, do you know what the Black Box tester doesn't do relative to the Fluke to justify the $1300 price difference? Does it really matter? This is an issue I hope to have to deal with more and more as I get to use network based audio systems more and more, and I probably should have a tester, but don't want to spend more than I need to.

Mac

Bingo.  I can see such tools in my future.  The Black Box unit appears to use TDS to qualify wiring and the unit can be inserted between 2 TCP/IP devices to monitor negotiated connection speeds.  The latter may not be important if working mostly with AES50, but could be useful with Dante.

I don't want a $2000 piece in my tool box if $600 will do.

[Jens Palm Bacher]

A local venue has installed some Cat 5E or Cat 6  cable for use on a specific show that we have traditionally pulled our own fiber for.  I need to test this for suitability for Dante networking, essentially that it will support Gigabit ethernet.  Some Googling around points to some utilities including one resident on Mac OSX that should confirm this. I plan to park my computer at one end of the line and one of the switches we use for Dante at the other end and run the utility.  Any reason to think this would not suffice to tell me if this will support the show?  Thanks for any pointers.

Some Intel and 3com NIC cards supports hadrware-level cable diagnostics

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

Chris, do you know what the Black Box tester doesn't do relative to the Fluke to justify the $1300 price difference? Does it really matter? This is an issue I hope to have to deal with more and more as I get to use network based audio systems more and more, and I probably should have a tester, but don't want to spend more than I need to.

Mac

Alas, I do not.

As others have suggested, probably not a lot (if anything). Fluke certainly carries a 'brand surcharge'

I don't own any of the above, as I rarely qualify cable installations myself (although I always specify that the installer should). In the UK, Flukes and others are readily available from testing equipment rental houses for very reasonable rates, so I do that for the half a dozen gigs a year that I need one...

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

The Black Box unit appears to use TDS to qualify wiring and the unit can be inserted between 2 TCP/IP devices to monitor negotiated connection speeds.  The latter may not be important if working mostly with AES50, but could be useful with Dante.

Its worth saying that since AES50 is an Audio over ethernet protocol (albeit only at Level 1), that these testers can be used to qualify AES50 cabling.

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

Some Intel and 3com NIC cards supports hadrware-level cable diagnostics

Indeed, great point Jens. The 4 port intel server NIC I have in my management PC supports this I believe.

Its worth saying though, that I don't think this is available in any laptop based NICs (or potentially any onboard NICs at all, even on server boards).

[Jens Palm Bacher]

Indeed, great point Jens. The 4 port intel server NIC I have in my management PC supports this I believe.

Its worth saying though, that I don't think this is available in any laptop based NICs (or potentially any onboard NICs at all, even on server boards).

My Lenovo T530 with a built in Intel network card seems to support some cable testing when using the proper Intel driver.

[Jim Wilkens]

I'm looking over my notes from the SynAudCon digital audio class and it looks like a Verification class tester such as the Black Box test for continuity, graphical wire map, length, Cable ID, distance to fault, tone tracing, and PoE detection. A qualification class tester, such as the Fluke CableIQ in addition does bandwidth test, diagnostics, and load characteristics. I would think it might be worth the extra dollars to have the bandwidth test.

SynAudCon is bringing their digital audio class to Connecticut in April. I would highly recommend it.

Jim W.

I use a Black Box TS580A "LAN Performance Verifier" to test and verify category performance of all the Ethernet cables we use for digital audio.

[Bob Leonard]

Bingo.  I can see such tools in my future.  The Black Box unit appears to use TDS to qualify wiring and the unit can be inserted between 2 TCP/IP devices to monitor negotiated connection speeds.  The latter may not be important if working mostly with AES50, but could be useful with Dante.

I don't want a $2000 piece in my tool box if $600 will do.

Mac / Tim,
There are literally 100's of cable testers on the market, and all claiming to do anything for anybody. There are testers that will qualify the cable, and testers that will certify the cable. We use the Flukes because they are considered the best regardless of type, and to be very honest I think that moniker is well justified. I think Flukes own verbiage describes the differences best.
 
"Qualification is a new category of testers designed to meet the emerging needs of network technicians who need to upgrade to higher network speeds as well as troubleshoot connectivity problems. Qualification testers, like Fluke Networks new CableIQ Qualification Tester, determines if an existing cabling link can or can not support certain network speeds and technologies. This differs from certification testers, like the DTX CableAnalyzer, which guarantees cabling installations comply with TIA/ISO performance standards and basic verification testers, like the MicroScanner Pro, which tests if the cable is connected correctly.
 
Qualification testers allow network technicians to perform a series of troubleshooting steps to better isolate cabling from network problems. For example, a first step in troubleshooting a network connectivity problem might be to check the speed and duplex settings of connected devices. If the tester shows the settings are matched, but the problem persists, a qualification test can be performed. Performing a qualification test will allow the technician to identify whether insufficient cabling bandwidth is the cause of the problem. Knowing your cabling's bandwidth capability allows you to close trouble tickets faster and helps ensure seamless upgrades to higher network speeds.

Choosing the right tool for the job
When to use a qualification tester: If you are a network technician, and need to see whether the existing cabling will support your 1000BASE-T network, a qualification tool is the right choice. If you need to troubleshoot connectivity problems and isolate cabling problems from network problems, then qualification is the perfect solution. If you have an existing network and are doing small adds, moves, and changes, or are setting up a temporary network and just need to qualify it for a specific network technology, a qualification tool is a good option.

When to use a certification tester: If you're a commercial installer or network owner who needs to prove that all cabling has been installed correctly, and meets TIA or ISO link specifications, you must certify it. If you are in a troubleshooting environment, and need to show unequivocally that the link under test is failing category 5e or 6 performance requirements according to TIA or ISO standards, your only choice is a certification tool. If you have a mixture of fiber and copper cabling, and often need to test both, cable certification tools do that best.

 To receive the support and financial security of a manufacturer's warranty, certification to TIA/ISO standards is your only option. Anything else makes the installer liable for the performance of the installation which can be quite costly. For example, a large 1000 link installation could represent a $100,000 (USD) project, which can be a hefty liability if manufacturer warranty is not obtained.

When to use a verification tool: Verification tools are typically used by any technician who pulls and terminates cable or performs basic moves, adds and changes. These tools are used as a first line of defense in finding connection and wire-pairing faults."
 
http://www.flukenetworks.com/enterprise-network/network-testing/CableIQ-Qualification-Tester
 
The Black Box Lan Scope, which runs about $2K,  will verify, can be used to certify, but does not qualify.
 
http://www.blackbox.com/Store/Detail.aspx/LanScopePro-Copper-Fiber-Network-Analyzer-Single-Mode/LANSCOPEPRO%c4%82SM

[Justice C. Bigler]

Holy Hell! Those Fluke DTX Certification testers start at like $10,000!

If we are testing digital audio networks and need to verify Cat5e and Cat6 networks up to 1000mbits, will the Fluke Cable IQ handle that?

I guess the other question is how fault tolerant the digital audio networks such as Dante are? If it's only passing 912mbits will it still work for our purposes?

[Philip Roberts]

We have a Fluke DTX 1800 at my work (IT for a university). Here's an example of the detail and data it kick's out in it's reports. Typical test time is on the order of 1 minute. All newly installed cables are tested and reworked for a 100% pass rate.
http://www.andrews.edu/~rphilip/Example%20Report%202.pdf
As you will notice one of the cables in the example failed. However despite this I've had 48 channels of Dante running on this link successfully, there have however been occasional times where the network has acted up, I can't say for sure however that it's because of the over spec cable but it certainly doesn't help.

I can't really explain why all the different tests the DTX can run matter.

In addition we have various other Fluke testers like the Intelitone Pro http://www.flukenetworks.com/datacom-cabling/copper-testing/IntelliTone-Pro-Toner-and-Probe that can ID a cable and do a simple wire map.

Our desk side support guys also have what I think is a LinkRunner http://www.flukenetworks.com/enterprise-network/network-testing/LinkRunner-Network-Multimeter that they can use to to see if a given port is active and at what speed. I think this would be considered a Verification Tester.

Hope this helps.

Philip

[Riley Casey]

Thanks for the illuminating responses.  Great stuff from the assembled wisdom.

Ready for the punchline?  Packing my gear yesterday to go inspect and test the cabling which included power, speaker lines and the ethernet lines I got a call from the production manager.  The installers failed to finish the job and we are jumping thru hoops on Monday to install our own cables. 

[Andrew Hollis]

If you are an IT tinkerer this trick may work for you. It's fairly high-level geek stuff, but it's not exactly complicated.

iperf is a free command-line client/server network performance tool. You can specify the bandwidth, packet size, packet type (TCP or UDP), and many other parameters. The implication being you can closely simulate a Dante packet. Or just check packet loss and max bandwidth.

Because iperf is a research tool and not a commercial product, its operation is not well documented. There are many usage guides found on the internet, so it's an evening of puttering definitely.

On an endpoint you'd run the server, such as a simple iperf -s -i 2

On the other, you run the client, for example iperf -c [server ip] -t 30 -i 2. The -switches are your test parameters. You'll get something like this depending on your test:

Interval      Transfer      Bandwidth
0.0- 2.0 sec  25.9 MBytes   109 Mbits/sec

This is a pretty good guide as well. While I'm doing this, I have Windows Task Manager Networking open and I change the View to show send vs receive, that confirms a visual of the test. For example, here are tests sending 5 Mbps, 10, 20, 40, 80, 90 Mbps, but not showing the server side. This at least shows me my client can handle the output--if it didn't, you'd see peaks and valleys in the graph:

[ProSoundWeb Community]