[COLUG] Figuring out which ethernet cable is which

[Angelo McComis]

What? You don't have a Cisco blade chassis style switch with at least a couple banks of 32 ports in your basement? (LOL)

Use the Fox & Hound then when you have this many unknown cables.

Tone generator goes upstairs at the jack you want to activate. Then take the probe and start touching cables in the basement. When you hear the tone that's the loudest (you might have a little bit of crosstalk if the cables run next to each other thriugh the walls), you have identified your cable.

While you're at it, you might want to id the other ones too if you think you might have this problem again down the road.

-AM

-----Original Message-----
From: "Mike Harrold" <harrold.family at gmail.com>

Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:18:39 
To:"Central OH Linux User Group" <colug432 at colug.net>
Subject: Re: [COLUG] Figuring out which ethernet cable is which


On 1/23/08, jep200404 <jep200404 at columbus.rr.com> wrote:
> Mike Harrold wrote:
>
> > What is the simplest/cheapest way ... to figure out which cable it is (and
> > for that matter, all the others so I can relabel them).
>
> Angelo McComis wrote:
>
> > Easiest: put a device (laptop) at the far end and connect it
> > to the nic. In the basement, try each of your leftover cables
> > in a switch til you find a link light.
>
> That's pretty darn good, as it can be done by one person alone,
> and doesn't require any extra equipment.
>
> I can improve that a bit.
>
> Upstairs, unplug all ethernet cables.
> In the basement, plug _all_ cables into the switch.

Herein lies the problem. I have probably 60+ cables in the basement.
(Each room in the house is wired, and in most cases in multiple places
in the room; moreover, each place has two wires -- one for internet
and one for a phone, although both are cat5e cables.)  My switch only
has 8 sockets (of which we only need 5 based on the current number
of internet devices).

/Mike
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