Over a decade ago I remember jumping up and down with joy when Fluke brought out its handheld connectivity tester.

Suddenly I no longer had to resort to the time-honored and time-wasting practice of “buzzing out” wires... nor did I have to hope my signal tracer was accurate enough in a closet stuffed with hundreds of wires.

Fluke has improved upon that cable tester big time.

The automated network and application analysis tablet does all the difficult work... if a tech knows what to look for, this unit will find it.

This thing has so many features it almost makes me want to be a professional wirepuller again...

Thanks for this, Dave - I never was a wire-puller, but I see where technologies of this type are important in increasingly comms-dependent economy.

Quick question for you: how would a device like this apply if an organization is looking to integrate their internal networking with the cloud? More important, less important, about the same?

Also, if you really want to check this out live - Fluke is coming to a town near you! Kitchner and Mississauga on the 14th and 15th of Sept - here's the link to the full schedule, which stretches from Vancouver to Quebec City.

Well, wirepuller isn’t fair of me, because this thing is for professional network people, and cable is only a tiny part.

It’s for the kind of person who appreciates plugging in a tablet and getting an instant picture of what the network looks like – virtualized and physical... protocols... and devices... in real time.

So if knowing exactly how your network is at that moment – not what you think it is or imagine it to be – then yes you’ll find it useful when looking to integrate to the cloud. At least in this former wirepuller’s opinion.

Let me get back to you with a more precise answer when I’ve had a word with the folks at Fluke. While the events start only 3 weeks from now in Vancouver, I have to wait ’til one arrives near me.

A Fluke meter is a thing of beauty. Even a few years and many models ago, you could plug one into a network and it would tell you how many feet away a cable flaw lay, and if your connectors were any good. Worth its weight in gold!