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Difficulty "toning" for ports on gig switch

My technicians have reported difficulty using any of several toner/wand sets trying to find ports on Cisco gig switches. It seems that the tone becomes inaudible, or shunts/dies after a few seconds. However, if they use the 'toner' function from one of the Fluke meters, they can hear it loud and clear, and find the port.

I tried searching on cisco.com and google before asking, but was not able to turn up anything that described or resolved the issue.

Some of the blades are VOIP-capable, although we're not using them for that at this point. Others aren't, but are gig-capable blades. Or could it have something to do with the power behind the tone being less coming from the 9V battery toner, instead of the Fluke meter?

Has anyone run into this issue, or have a clue what might be causing it?

Any insight, or guidance on where to look would certainly be appreciated.

Reply to
Gadget_jb
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x-posted to the cabling newsgroup

toner/wand

Reply to
Phil Schuman

You might want to investigate the Intelliprobe 200 from Fluke. It's a digital toner.

Carl "got one on the (b)leading edge and hate it" Navarro

Reply to
Carl Navarro

In many switches the unused pairs 1 and 4 are actually grounded or, more accurately, bonded to the switch?s ground. That would kill signal from the toner pretty effectively. Better toners can let you choose which pair to send the signal through and it should be either 2 or 3. Those pairs are not connected to the ground and for the toner look like they?re a 100 Ohm resistor which they can drive OK (would be even better if they were up in the air, but that only happens for unplugged cords)

Interesting enough, you've mentioned these are Gigabit, which has all four pairs separated from the ground. However, the #1 and the #4 can still be used for power and the internal resistivity of the power circuitry can be much less than that of a transceiver and can lower the toner's signal.

Reply to
Dmitri(Cabling-Design.com

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