Using toner on a live Network cable

[fs483]

Hello,

I was wondering, I have a customer that is moving into a new office already occupied by another company. My customer needs to have some cables identified (the ones going into his office) but the wall plates are not labelled and the patch cords between the patch panel and the switch is A MESS. Now knowing that Ethernet signals pass on pins 1-2-3-6 and the toner sends a tone on pins 4-5, will it damage the switch or cause network disruption ? My customer doesn't want to run on the other company's network and basically just needs to use the wire between his office and the patch panel. I know there are some tester that will make the port flash in a certain sequence but I don't want to buy that just for one time use and I don't want to start unplugging patch cords and wait till some yells that they lost their connection to the network. Oh BTW, it's in a lawyers firm !

Thx
anthony

 

[1864]

You should'nt disrupt anything, I've toned out many connected LAN's without a problem. To make it easier, oped the patch panel and touch your probe to only the WH/BL, BL/WH pair.

 

[SYQUEST]

Some data switches short pins 4 & 5 I found out from experience. So I just split the tone on two pairs. Also, this method can make it easier to find the cable, because the high twist count in CAT5e and 6 can cancel spillover radiation of the tone and make it harder to detect.

In other words CAT5e and 6 don't make good antennas!

Hope this helps!

....JIM....

 

[fs483]

HI Syquest,

Yes I've already heard of this method (from this forum) of spliting the tone on two pairs or putting on wire to ground and the other to the wire. Never needed that though.

Thanks
akwong