Because this lab was meant to familiarize us with the tools and methods of networking we mostly experimented with the tools to find their function. First we tried things that were likely to happen and then moved on to different kinds of test to see what the results might be. The following paragraphs describe how we performed the assignments.
We were to use the cable tester to determine whether or not the supplied cables were correctly constructed. We did this be connecting the cable to the tester and running the various tests on the cable. Some of the test possible were length to open, short detection, and termination. To test the length of the cables we tried different configurations of Tees and terminator connected to various lengths of cable to see how the readout of the tester changed. Similar tests were done with twisted pair cables too, these steps followed mostly what we did with the coaxial cable.
Another tool we tested was the protocol analyzer (PA). The PA is basically a small computer connected to the network that read off all the packets on the network and analyzed them in different fashions. The PA had a number of different function to experiment with, among these were displaying packet types, source and destination, mal-constructed packets, collisions, and amount of traffic. Another major function of the PA was the fault finder which was basically an expert system that would try to help with finding problems on the network.