#Best network engineer toolkit Patch#
#Best network engineer toolkit series#

One tool that I have found incredibly useful is the cable snake. What I like about my specific lantern is that it’s designed to omit 360 degrees of light and is bright enough to light an entire room. A lantern also is useful when trying to run wires through an attic or crawlspace. So I always keep a lantern with me when I go to fix a network.

#Best network engineer toolkit Patch#

It may seem strange to end my list of essential tools with a lantern, but I can’t tell you how many wiring closets and server rooms I’ve been in that were so dark that I couldn’t see the back of the servers or read the markings on a patch panel. The punch down with the tone corresponds to the jack with the inducer. You could then go down to the wiring closet and use a tone probe to see which punch down is carrying the tone. You could hook a network jack to an inducer, which would put an audible tone on the network cable. Suppose you have to service a network and none of the punch downs are labeled. If you work on networks that rely on patch panels, you’ll find a tone probe to be an extremely valuable piece of equipment. I sometimes just dial into a RAS server just to see if the modem picks up and if the various modulation tones sound correct. That’s why I keep a generic analog phone on hand.Īn analog phone is also useful for listening for line noise. Likewise, I’ve seen phone lines that will let you receive calls, but not dial out. I’ve seen several situations in which a problem with the phone company allows a modem to dial out but not receive calls. Having a phone line tester on hand will help you to diagnose many common problems, but there are some phone line glitches that you can detect only by using an actual telephone. This single tool can cut a pierce of CAT-5 cable, strip off the end, and place an RJ-45 connector onto the cable’s end.Ī phone line tester can help you to quickly diagnose phone jack problems. The crimper in the figure actually contains a wire cutter, a wire stripper, and a crimper. If a second LED is illuminated but the numbers don’t match up, you’ll know that an RJ-45 connector is wired incorrectly.Īnother handy tool is an RJ-45 crimper, shown in Figure B. LED lights on both ends of the test unit circuit means the cable is fine if the second LED is dark, it indicates a short.

#Best network engineer toolkit series#

For longer cable runs, one end of the cable to be tested will be plugged into the main testing tool, and the other end of the cable to be tested will be plugged into the secondary piece.Īlthough every cable tester works a little differently, this cable tester tells you whether or not a connection is solid through a series of LED displays. For shorter cables, such as patch cables, both ends of the length that’s being tested may be plugged into the main testing tool. Notice that there are two pieces to the cable tester. You can use the cable tester shown in Figure A on coaxial cable and RJ-45 based Ethernet cable. A cable tester should be at the top of your must-have list.