sundance-communications.com/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX Networking trace to switch

hello i have a customer i do phone work for. they want me to find out where their network lines are at the switch. i have tempo lan toner that normaly blinks the hub but wont work on this one. even if connected right into the switch. it is a gigabite system. i also tried to send a tone with an ideal lan tester on conductor 1 and then on 8. cant find it that way either. any ideas on how i can trace these lines when they are connected to the switch. thanks dave

If the switch has speed lights, you may want to hook up a 10baseT device at the far end.

Have someone unplug the LAN cable at the equipment end while you watch for the link light go out?

Make note of which ports are lit up. Disconnect one device, go back and see what is now dark. Go back and plug the device back in, and move to the next one.

there are 55 cables and they are all over the place. they have plugs on the ends and are plugged directly into the switches. its really hard to keep up with the lights with so many. does anyone make test equiptment to trace them that isnt too expensive. thanks dave

Hmmm...... theres a million different testers available that will blink network ports. Keep in mind that sometimes these will not work very well depending on the switch configuration. If you have to ID all the lines anyways might as well make a chart of which ports have link lights right now. Unplug a device, see which port went out on the switch, label it, rinse, and repeat. For the ones that do not have a device then plug your laptop in, if you get a link, walk over and see which port came on, label, rinse and repeat. If no link light comes on at all then you should be able to tone it out fairly easily.

If the switch is "smart", you might be able to figure out which port a computer is connected to by looking at the MAC address table.

now they say they may want a patch panel. if so i can tone them when the lines are at the patch panel. looks like i may be doing some weekend work! thanks dave

Is this a managed switch? If so, you'll want to find out if they use any VLANs. You'll need to keep track of the patch connections. BEFORE you start ripping everything apart.