LANBERT Media Qualification App

Your copper and fiber cable plant serves as the foundation of your network. But do you know whether it is of sufficient quality to provide the bandwidth required? With the insatiable growth in bandwidth demands, increasing speeds of Wi-Fi APs (with Multi-Gig 2.5/5Gbps backhauls), 1Gbps to 10Gbps upgrades, and new fiber deployments, network professionals must have confidence that their network will transport all data error-free and at the maximum speed possible. Downtime, packet loss or intermittent drops are simply not an option.

Traditional cable Certification and Qualification tools validate installation quality and standards compliance. However, they don’t account for real, active equipment behavior. LANBERT goes further by transmitting actual Ethernet frames across physical media and any switch interconnects between two points. It stresses the cable with data packets to see if frames are dropped, while taking into consideration the impact of the “Digital Signal Processing” (DSP) of the active components rather than just standards compliance, meaning, it provides a real-world view of the capabilities of your infrastructure.

This is why you can sometimes run 100 Mbps and PoE over a 250-meter cable. A Certification tool would fail the test immediately because it exceeds the 100-meter standard, but LANBERT exposes its real operating condition by validating what the link can truly carry, not just what the standard allows.

Available on the EtherScope® nXG, LinkRunner® 10G, and CyberScope®, LANBERT generates and measures the transmission of line rate Ethernet frames over your network cabling infrastructure, qualifying its ability to support 1G/10G on fiber and 100M/1G/2.5G/5G/10G on copper links.

Key Features

Maximize utilization of your existing cable plant and identify highest error-free through

Qualify copper or fiber cable bandwidth for up to 10Gbps

Takes into consideration the DSP capabilities of active equipment (Real World)

Can prove a link is stable over time and can validate performance on cables over 100 meters long

Why “The Link Light is On” Isn’t Enough

Running the LANBERT test using the EtherScope nXG, LinkRunner 10G and/or CyberScope as endpoints over a long duration (up to 24 hours) serves as a “soak test” to identify the presence of intermittent issues and noise events that can corrupt network traffic. With easy-to-read trend graphs and the ability to drill down to 1-second granularity, LANBERT helps you identify exactly when errors occur.

Poor quality components and/or installation workmanship can result in links that are susceptible to noise, whether induced from within cable bundles or from outside events such as electrostatic discharges (ESD), crosstalk, or electromagnetic (EMF) pulses caused by motors or other machinery.

24-hour “soak testing” with 1-second granularity

Improper connections can cause intermittent conductivity issues, particularly if any motion or vibration is present. This can cause not only bit errors and frame loss but may prevent certain technologies (Multi-Gig) from linking at the designated speed causing a downshift to the next lower rate.

But beware of other testers offering similar capabilities! Standard Layer 2-only Ethernet access link testing will not validate layer-3 enterprise switches and routers. Because it does not test the IP (Internet Protocol) layer, this methodology cannot pass through Layer 3 devices. Thankfully, NetAlly’s multifunction tools also feature the Layer 3 line-rate Network Performance Test app, that can transmit and test across your entire network infrastructure end-to-end – not just one access link and switch. It also includes up to 8 streams with individual L2 and L3 QoS and VLAN controls, essential capabilities for truly understanding the capacity and quality of packet transmission.