5 Reasons Every IT Pro Should Have a LinkIQ™ Tester in Their Toolkit

#1: You Can Test the Network, PoE, Wi-Fi, and Cable with a Single Device

When network issues arise — a user's inability to connect, an undiscoverable device, or sluggish Wi-Fi — pinpointing the root cause can be complex and time-consuming. It might stem from a misconfigured network switch, insufficient PoE power, wireless signal interference, or a faulty cable link. Traditional troubleshooting often requires multiple tools to diagnose problems across wired, wireless, and PoE networks.

The LinkIQ Duo tester, with its integrated network, PoE, Wi-Fi, and cable testing capabilities, eliminates the need for multiple devices to verify performance and troubleshoot your wired and wireless LANs.

• • On a live link, it can show a switch name, advertised speeds, port number, and assigned VLAN — all from the far end, without having to go back to the closet.


• • It can conduct an IP ping test and determine PoE capabilities of the Power Sourcing Equipment.


• • The LinkIQ tester can verify connectivity and identify cable issues such as opens, shorts, and miswirings.


• • Its Autotest feature even automatically tests the switch if it’s connected, or the cable if it’s not.

And in the case of Wi-Fi problems, the LinkIQ tester can assess signal strength, security status, and throughput for specific access points (APs) and analyze the entire wireless environment in the 2.4, 5, or 6 GHz bands.

#2: You Can Provide an Easy, Intuitive Interface for All Your Technicians

Not everyone on your IT team has the same level of experience; some might not be familiar with all the test parameters and standards that define cabling infrastructure performance and verify network, PoE, and Wi-Fi operation. And there’s no time to teach them during an urgent troubleshooting session.

The LinkIQ tester's intuitive interface makes it accessible to technicians of all skill levels.

• • Its gesture-based touchscreen with straightforward controls functions similar to modern smartphones, simplifying complex network testing tasks.


• • LinkIQ testers support multiple languages, including German, French, Japanese, Spanish, Thai, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean, Russian, Italian, and Portuguese.


• • When checking a cable link for continuity, the tester visually displays the wire map, clearly highlighting any failures. This visual approach aids in the quick identification of issues like shorts, opens, reversed pairs, and shield continuity problems, streamlining the troubleshooting process.


• • The LinkIQ tester even works with the Fluke Networks IntelliTone™ Probe or Pro3000™ Tone and Probe to trace cables and locate cable faults in a wall or telecommunications room.

#3: You Can Assess Your Network's Ability to Support Future Technologies

Ensuring your network infrastructure can handle new technologies and demands is crucial to the evolution of your IT environment. With its ability to qualify cabling to IEEE 802.3 standards, the LinkIQ tester empowers you to assess your network's capabilities.

For instance, if you're considering upgrading to Wi-Fi 5, you can easily verify whether your Category 6 cabling plant will support multi-gigabit speeds. The tester's intuitive interface provides clear results that show you if your network can handle the increased bandwidth or if an upgrade is required. You can even set the test limit for a simple PASS or FAIL, and LinkIQ will tell you which parameter caused the failure.

Beyond speed, the LinkIQ tester also helps you evaluate your network's PoE capabilities to confirm that power is available for a device. You can easily determine if a link is connected to a PoE-enabled switch and verify the switch's negotiated power class (0 to 8) and the actual wattage available (which may be different than what the switch reports if the cable is not up to the task or the switch is oversubscribed).

#4: You Can Analyze and Optimize Your Entire Wi-Fi Environment

The LinkIQ Duo tester provides a comprehensive view of your Wi-Fi network, simplifying analysis and optimization.

• • It displays all available Wi-Fi networks (SSID) and APs, along with AP signal strength, security settings, frequency bands, and channels.


• • The tester highlights potential problems, too, such as weak security settings and illegal or non-recommended channels.

The LinkIQ Duo tester's innovative channel interface combines channel utilization, AP signal strength, and overlapping channels for all APs in the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, or 6 GHz frequency bands on a single screen that's much easier to grasp than histograms generated from a spectrum analyzer. You can even dive deeper into specific channels and APs to assess channel utilization and test AP signal strength, transmit and receive rates, and latency. This detailed information lets IT teams efficiently determine optimal AP placement, channel configuration, and transmit power settings to avoid signal issues, interference, and high channel utilization that lead to slow speeds and weak or dropped connections.

#5: You Can Document All Results Easily for Strategic Benchmarking and Reporting

The LinkIQ tester empowers you to establish a comprehensive baseline of your network's performance and provides a benchmark to facilitate future troubleshooting. It allows you to store up to 1,000 test results that can be numerically incremented automatically to save time when testing in sequence — all labeled by project name, date, and time of the test.

You can even connect your LinkIQ tester to a PC via USB to export the data to LinkWare™ PC management software. From there, you can easily track all test results and generate professional PDF reports to share with stakeholders and facilitate informed decision-making.

Ready to streamline your network troubleshooting and optimization efforts? Discover how having an award-winning LinkIQ Cable+Wi-Fi+Network Tester in your teams' toolkits can revolutionize your IT operations.

Keep Learning

• • VLAN Troubleshooting with LinkIQ
• • How to Evaluate Your Cable Plant as per NBASE-T Standards
• • PoE Load Testing: Advanced Troubleshooting for Your PoE Systems
• • Troubleshooting Common Issues with Enterprise Wi-Fi Performance
• • How to Simplify Wi-Fi Analysis with LinkIQ™ Duo
• • LinkIQ Duo: Cable, PoE, Network, and Wi-Fi Testing in One