T3 Innovation NC950/ NC950-AR Net Chaser Speed Cable Certifier for Ethernet Review

Hello again. Today we’re going to have a quick look at an exciting new product from T3 Innovation, the NC950 Net Chaser and the active remote version – NC950-AR Net Chaser. Once upon a time JDSU made a line of network certifiers that were designed to certify network installations to IEEE standards 802.3 and TIA568A/B. This may be gibberish to most, but it important in that these standards carry a lot of legal weight with insurance and the like. So, ever since the JDSU line was discontinued, technicians have been on the lookout for an affordable certifier that will meet these standards requirements. Enter the NC950 Net Chaser.

First off, as mentioned above, these certifiers meet the standards of IEEE 802.3 and TIA568A/B. The NC950-AR also can conduct Bit Error Rate (BER) tests using the included active remote. These are the primary draws to this new certifier line, but they also conduct a whole host of other tests. This includes cable tests like signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), Skew measurements, and other standard cable tests like opens, shorts, miswires, split pairs, reversals, and high-resistance faults (as well as distance to said faults and cable length). The NC950 Net Chasers also perform a wide series of tests on active networks, like Power over Ethernet (PoE), Port Discovery, IP Pinging (IPv4, with support coming via firmware update for IPv6), Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP), Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP); VLAN discovery; and Traceroute to display packet routes. Overall, these testers cover everything from the line of old JDSU units with some added bonuses to keep up with the rapidly changing world of network communication.

If you are in the market for a network tester that meets all of the standard certification requirements, comes with a ton of easy to use features and doesn’t blow your budget, check out the T3 Innovation NC950 or NC950-AR.

Until next time.