Network Cable Tester

My apartment is wired for multi-room internet access, but it just wouldn't work. I suspected either I had a bad cable in the mix, or the wiring of the jacks was hosed. So I picked up this tool to find out what the problem was. More on that in a minute. The device comes with a transmitter/receiver (one unit), a smaller receiver, two patch cords and a 9v battery. If you just want to do a quick cable check you can just use the main unit, plug one end into the output, the other into the input and turn it on. It will cycle through all 8 wires, and then repeat until you turn it off. This is very important if you want to put the transmitter in one area and use the small receiver in another. It has a slow speed and a fast speed. You can also test a cable by plugging one end into the output of the main unit and plugging the other end into the small receiver. Same principle - lights are sequentially lit in order from 1 to 8, and you very that the receiver lights come on in the same order. The patch coords are used if you want to check out a network jack. You plug the cord in the transmitter and then into the jack. You can use the other patch coord the same way on the other end of your jack. Easy peasy. So back to my problem. Using this device I found that the wiring in my jack had 2 wires crossed and one wire disconnected. I opened up the outlet, switched the wires and seated the other, and all was good! I now have direct internet access throughout the apartment without having to use wireless. This is important for my DVR video streaming, and works perfectly. Very glad I ordered this unit. In 10 minutes I had my problem solved. Definitely an essential tool to have in the kit.

Good price for the product

I have a long ethernet run (50+ feet of cable) that lets me run 1 gig download in a workplace for many devices with a simple splitter. It worked well for a long time and the a year ago it stopped working. So I ran a large part of the cable again but it still didn't work reliably. Then I put the datashark on the cable to see if the cable had electronic integrity on all 8 component wires. The lights showed all 8 sub wires were working. I probably shouldn't have done it but at one stage I even had the DataShark feeding the 8 bit pattern directly to my Comcast router. And after that the 1 gig download hard wired ethernet download started working again. So from what I can see my DataShark woke up my comcast router and made it work again. Does anyone think that's possible?

Tool is as described (continuity checker only, no performance testing), and quickly confirmed some good cables in a new installation, as well as one bad one which had been wired as 568A on one end and 568B on the other. The cable worked fine, though, since the switch was autosensing. Was a little disappointed to see the same unit at Home Depot for less money, even taking tax into account, but it's still a lot easier to walk to the mailbox than it is to drive to HD.

I received the tester on time with Prime . The tester comes with a pouch, test cables, and 9volt battery inside the unit. I used the tester on 15 cables with new rj45 connectors placed at both ends at about 30 feet in length. There were 5 cables that needed the connectors replaced, saves time and embarrassment in the long run. This is simply a continuity tester and sold itself to my coworkers who are going to purchase one for their own. If the lights do not work in sequence from 1 through 8 then start inspecting your straight through connectors. The tester is light weight and receiver is very small. I figure the receiver will be the first thing lost because of its size, but if you are looking for an inexpensive tester. this unit wont hurt your wallet. If the manufacturer is reading this review then I would recommend attaching a strap to the receiver as you did with the base unit and make the casing of both units less slippery to hold. I would recommend this to a friend.

Works as described, no issues here.

Product didn't work at ALL!

Bought this to test Cat5 connectors on a whole-house stereo installation. I've left it to chance before and had a couple of bad connectors that resulted in unreliable operation of the keypads. This takes the guess work out of the project - you might be surprised how many of the male Cat5 connectors are bad - I had to replace 3 of 24 which would have resulted in headaches down the road when access was much more difficult. I also discovered a damaged length of Cat5 cable that must have been crushed and was causing intermittent shorts. For the small investment, this is a fantastic tool.