ok, so I recently purchased an ethernet line tester/toner for some of my side work I do (technology contractor) because of a job site I am currently working on seems to have bad wiring.

Anyways, when I was researching to buy one I was looking at all the Fluke ones, which are ungodly expensive. So, I was thinking that it was possible to take a laptop and like a live linux cd and possibly do a lot of the network analyzing from a laptop.

I am looking for suggestions on what to look for or perhaps try to compile myself to accomplish this. There is no way I want to spend $5,000 on a Fluke tester, but what the fluke tester actually does is pretty cool. It analyzes everything.

The difference is that with GNU/Linux FOSS you don't get a polished all-in-one tool. Instead you have access to a true cornucopia of applications ranging from specialistic tools only fifteen people on the planet actually use to best-of-breed ones to merely POC's that will singe hair and keypad or just won't work. For starters here's some Live CD's to look at: 10 Best Security Live CD Distros.

What kind of analysis are you looking to do? Are you looking for line utilization and error statistics, or something else?

If so, OpManager from www.manageengine.com is what I use for a couple of my client sites. It just basically collects SNMP data from the routers, switches, firewall, etc. and makes some nice pretty graphs, and gives line and system status of all devices being monitored. The retail is $795, but it has a fully functional "free" mode that will work for up to 20 nodes. It's available for both Windows and Linux.

If it's the Fluke PentaScanner you're talking about, unless you're also into optical fibre cabling, you can find a lot of them quite cheaply on Ebay or similar sites.

It's advantage is being able to do pin by pin analysis, crosstalk checks etc, which you can't do with a standard NIC which only uses a 4 wire connection.
Software exists for doing the traffic/echo/fade tests, but breathe deeply! It's almost the same price. Many managed switches now offer these diagnostics too..

As a cheeky solution, use some crossover RJ45 adapters to use the other pairs in the cable.

thanks for the replies...

I am a contractor/sub contractor on the side. An onsite tech company who is now sistered with a company I used to work for contracts me out to do all of their macintosh work. They don't have any mac guys. I also have some enterprise level HP certs, so they sometimes send me out on bigger business contracts.

I ended up buying a $150.00 ethernet tester/toner which will test out all 8 wires, send a tone, and detect length of the cable. It only works on Cat5/6 cables. I have never had to actually test out fibre at all, but you never know I might have to.

I would like an analyzer that would pull up what is mentioned before here, routers, servers, IP printers, etc.

I have used auditor and backtrack before a little bit but not too extensively. Mostly with auditing wireless security for a client or two in the past.

I think I may have answered my own question, but was perhaps more looking for some feed back from people who have used this stuff before and what they liked/disliked about it.

Cool.. so you'd already know that 9 out of 10 faults are connector probs.

I'd only end up using the pentascanner to certify an installation, rather than testing one for faults.. I have most success by swapping pairs in a cable with an RJ45 splitter/adapter at each end. If the cable's faulty that'll prove it.

I'll have a search around for ethernet frame diagnostic tools that you could build into a small SBC pc, unless you know where to find some mini macs for cheap!

well my work laptop is a HP NC4200 business class. I dual boot xp pro SP2 and Suse 10.1 on it. So far, I am really pleased with this laptops performance, it is a little work horse.

I am going out to a site tomorrow and I know there is a bad cable in there somewhere. I already verified it by runnint a cat 5 cable from router to router to router (yes thats three routers) with my own cable by passing their wires in the wall. The main router sent up ips and the other routers acted as repeaters and it worked great.

I hook it back up to their wires (which are in the walls) and I can't even ping the router that is the DHCP server. I get a connection light on the nic, but no link light.

Now, I have been working in IT for over 7 years now, but in all honesty every job I have ever had was already wired, and I never had to lay down new cable. So, I have read about how to troubleshoot it, and I have made my own cat5 cable once or twice, but don't have a huge of actual on the job experience with it.

So, I just thought I'd pick some brains to get some ideas before I go out on the job so I kind of know what to expect. I have a tester/toner, and toner probe so I can tone out the cables (they are not labeled by any means at this site) and then start testing them out. If that doesn't work I am going to check the actual RJ45 jacks in the walls and see what goes there.

Thanks for your help on this.

Ya, I was hoping there would be an open source all in one app I could utilize. This is for side work, so its not like I have a lot of money to dump into it. However, I am writing off all the tools I do buy for the job. I am writing off that tester I just bought, and the 9volt battery that powers it lol!