Good afternoon my name is Jim Davis I'm a regional marketing engineer here at
Fluke Networks and welcome to the Fluke Technical Assistance Center. Today I
wanted to tell you about, it's a small thing,but it's really important. There's
new firmware for our Versiv platform. If you were to look in the tools menu of
the Versiv platform and version information you can see that we've
upgraded to version 5.6. Whoa, 5.6 what's in it for me? Well there's
actually some cool features. First of all where do I get new firmware from? Well,
support/downloads and updates. Many different product choices could be
CertiFiber could be OptiFiber I'm going to choose the DSX and from the DSX
you can download a copy of the latest firmware. Now to transfer the firmware
from your laptop onto the tester we're gonna be working from our Linkware
software. Now there are different ways to do the upgrade you could use LinkWare Live.
If you're using Linkware Live, it's probably already told you there's
an update and you don't need to watch this video but if you're not using
Linkware Live plug in your USB cable USB cable goes into main upgrade the main of
course with our trusty upgrade button here this is a diskette children in the
olden days that's how we transferred that's how he transferred data after you
upgrade the main you'll plug it in and you'll upgrade the remote well thanks
Jim we understood the mechanics of how to do
the upgrade but now what's this great benefit in the upgrade well if we look
here we're gonna run a regular old category 5 test now the regular old
category 5 test is great TI a 568 but there's a deficiency you'll see that we
passed this test the deficiency is this in the resistance value I have a letter
I Why the letter I? I don't know why it it'd have to be letter I.
Doesn't look like pass it doesn't look like fail but not satisfied with it now
the reason we're using the letter I, I is informative. You can see down
here on the bottom that there's not a limit yes the
standard says loop resistance testing is optional
so I can't fail it if it's optional let's take a look at what the new
firmware does for us when I'm changing the test limit that I want to use I can
edit this test limit and I'm gonna select a new test limit here the last
test that I used I'm gonna jump into more and here's where it's going to
start to be different you'll find this both in ISO the international standards
and within the TIA limits within the TIA limits rather than having all the limits
we've separated it now by categories category a category 6a we were just
doing a category 5e test so let's drill into category 5e and a couple years ago
you guys will remember we had the basic tests plus the POA limits and they're
back yay seriously plus all limits are fantastic plus all I can turn them on
with this button here when I turn on the limits with the plus all button that
adds other tests that are not required not required by the standard certainly
interesting to know particularly the balanced tests the TCL test but our
interest today is in the plus POA tests I'm gonna select the permanent link plus
POA tests I have my permanent link adapter it's heavy duty so I don't start
the test until I get to the outlet and flexing this adapter isn't going to
affect my test results now we'll save that you selected and run the tests
again no I'm not gonna save that passing test result I already know that it
looked like it passed but I don't think that it really does pass I'm suspicious
of this cable it was very inexpensive the guy at the store told me don't worry
about it this cable is great well I won't worry about it when the
Fluke tells me it's great that's not the sound of great so we failed what failed
here well we passed length about 50 meters we passed insertion loss return
loss and next but resistance resistance has failed but it's the same cable we
just tested it I haven't changed anything well it turns out the limit for
loop resistance is only 21 ohms they have more than 25 ohms of resistance on
a 50 meter link in half the distance we have a
full distance worth of resistance that means your power over ethernet is going
to be inefficient you're gonna have to put in more energy if your POE device
works at all. So why did this cable fail resistance? Well picking it up will
notice right away boy that cables not heavy enough yeah
copper coated aluminum it's garbage it's not acceptable for the
standard you don't want to use it the new plus POE limits in version 5.6 will
make it easier for you to specify to your team or for you to run tests and
deliver results to your customer that are reliable.