Tracking live network cables

More and more companies have systems that are in operation 24/7, that cannot in any circumstances be switched off. Sometimes the data centre cabling is poorly documented.

Regular toners and tone generators are absolutely fine if you know the cabling is not live. Like identifying cables prior to the network cabling being hooked up to the network infrastructure or even to identify cables before the cables have been terminated.

An Outlet identifier can blink the lights on the hub or switch port making identifying your cabling pretty simple. Very useful when the network is not live, but not very useful when you don’t know what is connected to the cable.

So, how do you track cabling that may be carrying live network traffic?

You can tone a live network cable if you use an asymmetric toner. An asymmetric toner produces tones well above the frequency used by network traffic so does not interfere with it.