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Best Cable Tester

Fluke's LANMeter Measures Up Best

Cabling may not be the most glamorous part of your network, but a network administrator's toolkit isn't complete without a cable tester. There are some good ones on the market, but Fluke's 675 is well-connected, making sure your cables are correctly connected.
When Fluke first came out with the 670 Token-Ring LANMeter two years ago, it set a new standard for "handheld" network testing. Not only does the 670 perform all the usual cable scan tests, including checking for a short or open cable with distance to the fault, but it also adds basic error, network and protocol statistics. Fluke followed with a version for Ethernet, the 672, and now offers the 675, a Token-Ring and Ethernet version.
Its large LED matrix display along with menu-driven selections make the tester easy to read and operate. Other user-friendly features include color-coded LEDs for instant network utilization read-out, a print button to produce a hard copy of test results, and a help button to display content-sensitive help. As a monitor, the 675 summarizes error statistics, including beacons, claims and purges for Token-Ring and collisions, runts and CRCs for Ethernet.
The 675 can display network statistics, including the top senders, receivers and broadcasters, and network utilization. You can ping IPX and IP hosts and clients, measuring response time. For Token-Ring, the 675 can identify abnormally high levels of jitter and has a special beacon LED with corresponding fault domain shown on the display.
Scope's WireScope 100 is easy to use, and performs the most comprehensive tests on Category 5 cabling, including near-end crosstalk (NEXT), attenuation and ambient noise from 1 MHz to 100 MHz. Microtest's PentaScanner is generally effective and easy to use.

Fluke 675 Token-Ring/Ethernet LANMeter, $9,495, Fluke Corp., P.O. Box 9090, Everett, WA 98206.
(800) 44-FLUKE; fax (206) 356-5116.

Runners Up
Microtest PentaScanner,
Microtest, 4747 N. 22 St., Phoenix, AZ 85016-4708. (602) 952-6400;
fax (602) 952-6401.

Scope Communications WireScope 100,
Scope Communications,
100 Otis St., Northboro, MA 01532. (508) 393-1236; fax (508) 393-2213.