Figure 8: Testin' cables

If you've connected everything up correctly, the lights will march in sequence from 1 to 8; if not, you've got work to do.

TIP: Since you'll be connecting into jacks at both ends, you'll need two known-good normal Ethernet patch cables in order to plug in the testers.

So my patch panel punch-down sequence went something like this:

1) Walk to an outlet box and plug the cable tracer tone generator into a white (data) jack or blue (phone) jack (the built-in RJ11 cable was handy for this).

2) Walk back to the patch panel, use the cable tracer probe to find the tone, then mark the cable. ( Direct contact with the wire isn't necessary, since the probe senses the RF field created by the tone generator.)

3) Walk back to the outlet box and remove the generator so that I don't accidently short it while cutting and terminating the cable on the other end. (The tone generator might have had output protection built-in, but I wasn't going to risk it.)

4) Walk back to the panel, complete the punchdown, and plug in the cable tester.

5) Walk back to the outlet, plug in the cable tester remote and cross my fingers.

6) Rinse and repeat

You can see I would have saved a lot of hassle (and walking) by not screwing up on the cable marking!