Networking Tools — 220-1201 Study Guide

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Included in this chapter:

Tool	Job	What it does	Reach for it when
Cable stripper	Terminate	Bares the cable jacket without nicking the conductors	Prepping a cable end for a plug or jack
Cable crimper	Terminate	Presses an 8P8C/RJ45 plug onto a cable end	Making a patch cable
Punchdown tool	Terminate	Forces solid wire into a jack, 110 block, or panel	Terminating a wall jack or patch panel
Cable tester	Verify	Wiremaps opens, shorts, reversed, and split pairs	Confirming a run is wired correctly
Loopback plug	Verify	Loops a port's transmit pins back to its receive pins	Testing whether a NIC or port is alive
Toner probe	Locate	Puts a tone on a wire and traces it with a probe	Finding one cable in a bundle
Wi-Fi analyzer	Locate	Reads channels, RSSI, and SNR in the air	Diagnosing slow or overlapping Wi-Fi
Network tap	Locate	Copies live traffic inline to a monitor port	Capturing traffic for an analyzer or IDS

Cheat sheet

Crimp a plug on a patch cord; punch down a jack or panel
Use stranded cable for patch cords and solid cable for in-wall runs
Strip the jacket with a cable stripper before you terminate
T568A and T568B swap only the green and orange pairs
Match both ends to the same standard for a straight-through cable
Auto-MDIX makes crossover cables obsolete on gigabit ports
A cable tester reports the wiring fault type, not its distance
A split pair passes pin-to-pin continuity but breaks the pairing
A loopback plug tests whether a port can send and receive
Use a toner probe to trace one cable through a bundle
Read RSSI for signal strength and SNR for interference
Non-Wi-Fi sources raise the 2.4 GHz noise floor invisibly
A network tap copies live traffic inline without dropping frames
A wiremap cable tester uses a remote unit at the far end
Seat every conductor to the front of the plug before crimping, or pins read open
A Wi-Fi analyzer shows which channels nearby APs occupy so you can pick a clear one

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Cheat sheet