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How do I use a tone generator/probe? 6

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Haleon

Haleon

IS-IT--Management
Feb 2, 2004
80
US
Alright, here's the situation:

The company I work for is getting ready to move into a new bulding, and I went over there and looked at it today. The building has lots of offices and cubicles, and they all have two or three CAT5e cable jacks in there. The wires are all running to a server room where they've been chopped off at a patch panel. So we have about 154 wires just hanging down, and they're all pretty much unlabeled.

So I have no idea how to go about finding out which wire runs to which office. Through some research, I've been led to believe that the product I'm looking for to help me solve this problem is a tone generator and a probe, so I went out to Home Depot and bought the Tempo/Progressive 77HP tone generator and the 200EP probe. Now I just can't figure out how to use it.

It's got two alligator clips and an RJ-11 jack on the tone generator. How would I use this to identify "unterminated" cables? Anybody got any ideas on how to help me do this? Thanks!
 
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Turn tone generator on and Plug the rj11 plug into a jack in the feild you wish to identify and go to the server room.Press the button on the probe and touch each cable, when you get to the one with the generator plugged in you will hear the generator. be sure the cables arte cut clean and arent touching together with bare copper in server room.
 
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Get an 8-conductor "banjo" adapter, connect the aligator clips to pins 1 and 8 and plug into your cat-5 jack. Use the probe to identify the wire at the server room. Punch the cables on a patch panel and mark the jack to match the number of the port on the patch panel. Get something to test the connections as well. It must at least be sophisticated enough to detect split pairs, not just continuity.
 
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Thanks for the tips, guys. I have a question.

I'm here at my current office, and I wanted to test it on some cables that are labeled. When I plug in the RJ-11 jack to the RJ-45 jack and probe the correct cat5 cable in the server room, I get no tone. Will this tool not work if the cable is already terminated and patched onto a patch panel? Will it ONLY work on wires that are unterminated?
 
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Or will this not work unless I have that banjo adapter mentioned above?
 
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A lot of times the switch will null the tone or at least make it have a very low sigal . You may want to pick up a Microscanner por if you are going to be doing very mush of this type work. It send a signal down all 4 pairs and will make the port blink on and off if it is plugged into one.


This product is the above link if you would like to look at it.

Mike Jones
Louisiana State University Health Sciences center
 
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Ok, so it turns out I had the right equipment and was using it correctly. Apparently it doesn't work on the lines in my current office for whatever reason (there may just be too much interference back there), but I decided to take a quick trip down to the new office and give it a whirl. Sure enough, I just plugged in the rj-11 jack into the data end and then touched the wands to the sliced cables, and it screamed like a banshee when I got the right one. Thanks for all the help, guys!
 
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Even if you do happen to find the cable, you still won't know the condition of that cable. It would be best to get a wirescope which has several of the testing tools built in plus your tone generator which you are using. I have to agree to using the 8 Pin Banjo adapter which you connect the two free aligator clips to two of the contacts. But I've had better luck using pins 4 and 5 when I do my testing and search. If you don't have access to a wirescope to test the existing cabling nor don't understand how to use one. It's best to hire a professional who certified to the TIA/EIA standards. In the long run it will save you a bunch of headaches and your company a lot of money. Never trust previously installed cabling unless it has been tested.
 
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Well I've got a Molex SLT3 to test the cables with. I was planning on identifying them all, patching them to a patch panel, and then testing them port-by-port to see if any are damaged. Do you think that would be sufficient?
 
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While we're at it, I have a question that isn't really on topic. What are those outlets called that you plug UPS power supplies into? The ones with the big outlets? Are they 240 volt outlets?
 
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Does plugging the generator into a live network jack affect the port on a hub or router? Can it blow the port?

Bo

Kentucky phone support-
"Mash the Kentrol key and hit scape."
 
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Well, it didn't blow the ports I plugged it into, but I don't know if that means it's ok to do it.
 
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Here's a good trick.

Connect one side of the tone generator to a good ground and connect the other side to one or more conductors of the cable (the conductors you use the better).

In this case you have deliberately "unbalanced" the connection so more signal will leak out. Also if pairs are shorted this is not a problem.

With 5, 5e, and 6 this technique works really well since it allows you to hear the tone without actually touching the pairs.
 
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While we're at it, I have a question that isn't really on topic. What are those outlets called that you plug UPS power supplies into? The ones with the big outlets? Are they 240 volt outlets?"

Depends on the type of plug....most are clearly marked on the plug itself. If done to code any ways...

Cheers,
 
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The reason for using Pins 1 and 8, on a Cat-5 jack, it first to split the pair so the tone will be easier to find on the cable. Cat 5 is really good at canceling out the tone, and you have to "wipe" the probe down the jacket of the individual cables to try to find it. Try one split on 1 and 8, and then on 4 and 5 and you will see the difference.

Once the cables are on a patch panel, pins 1 and 8 are easy to get the probe close to from the front end of the panel when searching for the port (use the nylon probe tip here)
 
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Tone generally gets shunted down when placed on a shorted pair, which all pairs in a connected LAN drop would be, even between conductors that don't constitute a pair (like 2&8). Putting one side to ground, also, can prove frustrating because instead of hearing no tone (as on shorted pairs), you'll hear tone everywhere and nowhere in particular. With the cut off ends you originally mentioned, it's a piece of cake since the pairs are open.
 
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I made an adapter that converted my toner to pins 1 and 8 the other day after reading tommy's post. Used it this morning with a bundle of 8 wires and my signal was 3 times louder than usual and made life much easier. Love the tips and tricks that can be learned here.. Thanks T-Tone.

Bo

Kentucky phone support-
"Mash the Kentrol key and hit scape."
 
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