Federal technology leaders offer insights and thought leadership on a sharp rise in cyberattacks, the shift to hybrid work and much more.

Carlos Soto is an award-winning reviewer and journalist with 20 years of experience covering technology and business within various sectors and industries.

Carlos Soto is an award-winning reviewer and journalist with 20 years of experience covering technology and business within various sectors and industries.

From an IT worker’s perspective, networks are the lifeline of a federal agency. Low network latency is essential to both citizen services and project and mission execution.

Seamlessly upgrading networks to achieve higher speeds is critical if the IT staff hopes to meet increasing demands for network resources without upending the current infrastructure.

This makes optimizing infrastructure — without adding staff and within limited budgets — a priority at most agencies.

But how to optimize network performance without new hardware or technology? A job like that requires a tool like the CableIQ device by Fluke Networks.

Fluke Networks has a long history of making top-of-the-line network testing and optimization tools, and CableIQ follows that pattern. A cable troubleshooting and bandwidth qualification tester, CableIQ is engineered for easy use by technicians of every skill level.

CableIQ enables IT staff to see, at a glance, whether a copper-based cable is qualified to support 10/100, VoIP or Gigabit Ethernet.

It can also quickly diagnose whether the cable is fully intact and ready to perform optimally, or if it is damaged or degraded in some way.

Given that most networks comprise miles of cabling purchased in different decades, brought in by different vendors or left as relics of past implementations, separating the good from the bad is critical.

It’s also important to diagnose whether slow bandwidth and interruptions are happening because of actual networking issues or because of bad cabling.

CableIQ can do that, detecting and displaying the speed and duplex settings of attached switches, cables and PCs regardless of network type. The intelligent wiremapping feature graphically shows the exact distance to faults. It’s one of the best features of the unit.

By graphically displaying the cable’s wiring configuration, the intelligent wiremap shows IT staff the distance to faults and shorts, saving time, money and resources when hunting for points of latency across a network.

Open-circuit voltage is the voltage difference measured between two terminals lacking a detected current; the short-circuit current is a current flowing when the terminals are forced to have zero voltage difference.

In any size network, these are onerous to troubleshoot, and they can make it harder to declutter networks and maintain consistent bandwidth performance. But it’s a straightforward process with CableIQ.

Portable solutions like CableIQ can streamline most diagnostic processes and keep federal networks running with optimal performance.

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With limited time and resources, closing help desk tickets is always a challenging task. While the CableIQ device from Fluke Networks can’t solve every problem, it can go a long way toward eliminating key suspects behind network issues.   The portable device can cut cable troubleshooting time in half. The easy-to-read display and easy-to-understand diagnostic results saved several minutes in simulated lab test exercises, even when compared with less complicated testing devices.    The CableIQ advanced diagnostics solution not only identifies and locates open-circuit and short-circuit issues quickly, but also finds and fixes connection faults not related to wiremapping, such as cross-talk or large changes in impedance. That’s something that almost no other single hand-held system can provide.   You can even use the built-in IntelliTone digital technology to tone and trace without disconnecting a cable from the network, so you don’t have to unplug cables to diagnose them.    That means you no longer need to unplug good cables and interrupt network services to find the one cable that might be bad. This not only saves trouble-ticket investigation time but also prevents new tickets from being generated due to working cables being unplugged.

LEARN MORE: Get tips on choosing the right Ethernet cables for your agency's needs.

According to Fluke Networks, CableIQ’s easy-to-use interface helps IT departments close open tickets faster and reduces on-call time by up to 30 percent, freeing IT technicians to work on other, more mission-critical projects.   Another key to adding bandwidth back to your IT help desk is the ability to remove disputes over the potential cause of network problems. When latency or network disruptions occur, the first reaction is usually a guessing game, and tempering often leads to disputes in prioritizing the search for the culprit that is clogging the network.    CableIQ helps end the guessing game with features that locate cables and wires with superior accuracy. IntelliTone digital signaling technology precisely locates cables in even the most chaotic wiring closet, letting IT experts get to the source quickly — even when the problem is hidden in a spaghetti-like mass of wires.    Most important, the intuitive user interface and graphical display requires little or no training to use, and the results can be uploaded to a PC with CableIQ Reporter Software, which comes standard with each unit. That means junior technicians can be sent to take readings, leaving senior IT staffers to analyze the results.  

DEVICE TYPE: Network tester SUPPORTED MEDIA TYPE: Copper wire SUPPORTED CABLE TYPES: Audio, FTP, RG59, RG6, Security, SSTP, STP, UTP TESTS, TOOLS AND MEASUREMENTS: Pair length, port discovery, speed-test copper cables to 1000Base-T, toning, VoIP, wiremapping CONNECTORS: F connector, RJ-11, RJ-45 INCLUDED ACCESSORIES: F-connector adapter, soft case TEST STANDARDS: TIA-570B

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