Here's the premise:

I am kind of the de-facto IT guy on a poorly setup internal network that has been patched together over the last decade or so. Parts have been installed by our corporate bosses, people with varying levels of knowledge on networking, and people who really have no clue what they are doing.

Now, personally, I have very little knowledge of what I'm doing, but enough to get by. And I know that I can't just leave this network like it is. Someone needs to go in and clean it out.

To this end I've started working on mapping IP's and devices, which I'm having more or less success with, but the big hurdle is going to be the physical map of the store and tracing where the nearly 1-gross cables go. There's really only one tool for this job: A good tone generator and probe.

My boss has offered to buy one to do this project, which is helpful to say the least. So I'm looking for a good quality product, and thus I'm turning to you guys.


Here's what I'm looking for:

1) Obviously it needs a tone generator and a probe. Otherwise tracking where the cables are plugged in is kind of useless.

2) I'd really like it to also have cable testing abilities, so we can see if any cables are bad or are running too long.

3) If at all possible, I'd like to generate the tone in the cable without unplugging the patches. Yes, I know this is going to be the bitch of all bitches. But the problem lies in the environment. Basically this is a retail store, and the registers and credit card readers need to have a connection to the internet and to the Point of Sale Server at all times.


If #3 isn't possible I will make due. But I still need these. Any help would be appreciated.

(also, if anyone knows how to work The Dude or a similar network mapping program, or can give me some pointers on how to get routing information from a monitored switch... Or hell, even from a low level linksys switch or hub... I'd greatly appreciate it, as I suspect the network has far too many of those.)