Testing Ethernet cables

[Chaoslux]

I've recently been getting some lag that feels a lot like i'm losing packets (It goes from 35ms to everything frozen in place back to 35-40ms a few seconds later) and i'm wondering if some of my cables aren't the cause of it. So i guess i should be grabbing a cable tester, but i have no clue what could be considered a good one, a bad one, or features that such a device should have.
Anyone got any recommendations? Store of choice would be newegg.ca but amazon could work too i guess.

[Freddiee]

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...16899708053CVF
Should fit your needs nicely. Fluke is a well known manufacturer of these kinds of devices, got nothing negative to say about them.
Got a few of their products at work.

[Djinni]

What makes you think that the Ethernet cable is at fault?

[the game]

If you really want to find out if it's your cables then the cheapest way to test them is to swap them out.

[chazus]

Not sure why you would want to spend $50-$100 on a cable tester, when you can just replace the cable for like... $6. If its the cable, you spent $6. If it's not the cable, you only wasted $6.

[Theodon]

Cable issues are generally shown by losing connectivity all together rather than lag. Is the issue localised to a single application? It could be data throttling by your ISP if it's stuff like online gaming, or it could be a flaky router. If it's throttling then chances are it's going to be felt when you play something like DOTA.

[Cyrops]

I've recently been getting some lag that feels a lot like i'm losing packets (It goes from 35ms to everything frozen in place back to 35-40ms a few seconds later) and i'm wondering if some of my cables aren't the cause of it. So i guess i should be grabbing a cable tester, but i have no clue what could be considered a good one, a bad one, or features that such a device should have.
Anyone got any recommendations? Store of choice would be newegg.ca but amazon could work too i guess.

Don't buy that 100 bucks tester, we use really cheap one at work, something like this:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16899816011
or this
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16899263025

But you would be better off replacing the cable. But the issue is, the cable might be faulty where you can't test it.
Have you tried calling up your ISP and complain about it?

[Itakas]

As many have mentioned, if you think your cable is the problem, buy new one and test it out. Or if you can borrow one from a friend, dont just go and buy a tester that you will use 1 time and then let it collect dust.

[Chaoslux]

Thank you all for the posts, i did call my ISP and complain about it, and while sometimes it was on their side, the tech told me that some times, there were nothing wrong on their side. The way the cable is installed makes it slightly hard to simply replace most of them, hence why i wanted to test them.

[the game]

Have you for sure ruled out your modem and your router? For example have you taken your computer out of the router and plugged it directly into the modem? I'm still having trouble believing that the problem is with your network cables. have you ran a tracert yet? if not please run one and post the results here. I don't know if you are having this trouble while gaming or while you're doing other things. If this is happening while you play wow then you'll want to replace the x's in the instructions with the ip address of the server you are on. A list of the IP addresses is here https://us.battle.net/support/en/art...g-a-traceroute . if it's while you are doing other things run the tracert to google. you can use the web address instead of the ip address in this case.

Running a Trace Route

Windows
Click Start and type CMD in the search field.
Right-click on CMD.exe and select Run as Administrator.
Type tracert xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx > c:\tracert.txt and press Enter. Replace the x's with the appropriate server address.
Allow several minutes for the trace route to complete.
A file will be created inside your C: drive called tracert.txt that contains your trace route information.
Type exit and press Enter to close the command window.
Mac OS X
Go to the /Applications/Utilities folder and start the Terminal application.
Type traceroute xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx > ~/Desktop/tracert.txt and press Return. Replace the x's with the appropriate server address.
Allow several minutes for the trace route to complete.
A file will be created on your desktop called tracert.txt that contains your trace route information.
Type exit and press Return to close the terminal.