Today I had an issue with a number of pcs in a new medical office. The ip guy called me to say he was losing network conectivity with some of his pcs. I went to the site and tested the cables and network ports with my RWC. It told me that my cables all passed for gigabit speed but that there was a problem negotiating with the Dell managed gig switches. After a call to Dell support, the solution turned out to be a setting on both ends, a nic option as well as a switch option. We had to turn IEEE settings off. This is the energy efficient ethernet option which turns the nic and the switch port off after a time of inactivity. This causes the connection to drop and a problem with auto negotiation when the pc tries to reconnect. My inexpensive certifier saved me a lot of time by pointing me in the right direction.

Sounds as if energy efficiency still ends up costing someone else money in the end. Energy/matter cannot be destroyed; it can only change form.

Is this more 'distribution of wealth' that I keep hearing about?

Yes, Ed, it saves 0.003 watts of electricity so that the technician can drive his 12 MPG fully-equipped van twenty-seven miles each way to reset the equipment.

Ive got one of those RWC doodads, pretty good for the money