LinkRunner Reviews

I have LinkRunner G2, and I use this product for testing and troubleshooting. I am able to test my network connections and cables and do general troubleshooting for network drops, network outlets, etc. 

I do connectivity tests and cable verification, and I use it to do network link tests to check network drops and know whether it's alive or not alive, and if it is alive, which services are available. This tool does that quite well. It tells me if my link is alive, and not just that, if it is a switch, I get the model information of the switch and whether PoE is being delivered on the switch or the wire. I get the DNS server, and I get the IP address. It also checks if there is internet access on that line. If there's a VLAN, it gives me the VLAN number. It does quite a lot of tests in a very quick time. It saves me a lot of time. I don't have to run around and troubleshoot one thing after another.

It's very useful to me. Normally, I have to send a network specialist onto a site to do network tests because it requires a certain amount of expertise to log into a switch and check the services and VLAN information. Now, with this tool, I can send a technician who's already on site and already available, and that technician can simply plug this in and run the tests that are pre-configured on this device. The technician would have a lot of information to work with and know exactly where the problem is, what services are available, and whether the internet is there or not. If it's not there, the technician can give me the IP address that he or she is getting, and I can figure out what I need to do on my end without having to send a network specialist. This has saved me a lot of time. In the healthcare industry, in which work, time is of the essence. Hospitals need to be up and running, and I don't always have a network specialist available because it's a scarce resource, but I always have technicians. It allows me to respond quickly. It has reduced the time to troubleshoot a problem and resolve an issue. I no longer need to send a specialist out. Technicians can get the needed information without having to log into a switch or do any complex work that they are not familiar with.

It's an excellent testing tool for conducting network testing on copper and fiber, and what makes it excellent is the time it takes. It's a lot faster than other tools that I've used. It gives me a very reliable response, and it gives me various parameters for my test, such as the length of the cable, a wire map, etc. There is a colored screen, and it's very easy to read, which makes it very easy to work with. As opposed to some of the tools I've used that just give you a beep or two beeps, it gives me a lot more information which makes it easy to detect exactly where the problem is or how far along a line there may be a problem. That makes it very useful and an excellent tool to work with.

With Link-Live, as soon as I run a test, that test is uploaded to my account online. I don't have to save it, download it, or copy it. It doesn't get lost. So, I can go online and see all the tests that my technicians have run. I can have those tests assigned to a site, so remotely, I know what are the conditions of my sites, how reliable my networks are, and where improvements are needed. It stores all of my results, and those test results are online and available to me whenever I need them. It gives me a rich history, and it helps me to detect trends on my networks and where I need to do extra work. This historical reporting and being able to instantly access reports online is very helpful.

I use LinkRunner's AutoTest feature. It simplifies all the testing because just one click does it all. I hit that button, and it runs a series of tests in one go, without me having to interact with it. I just get my results, and I can get to the bottom of my testing. AutoTest gives me a bunch of results. It gives me very useful information. It tells me whether my link is alive; it tells me the speed I'm getting, whether it's a hundred megabits or one gigabit per second. For a switch, it tells me what port I'm on and what's the model of that switch. It tells me if I got an IP address. It tells me what my IP address is and which DNS server gave me that IP address. It tells me if I have internet service on that link, and if I'm doing PoE, it tells me if I have Power over Ethernet available on that link. It also tells me if there's a VLAN that I'm using and what's that VLAN number. There is a very rich test set that is produced by LinkRunner, and this information is very important to me in troubleshooting. Normally, I have to run a series of different tests to try to locate what the problem is. I have to run one test and then do another test, and another test. With LinkRunner, I can certify that the network connections I give to my clients have all the services they need. It also tells me how my network is configured. It helps me to provide reliable connectivity and also benchmark my network performance.

It's the fastest tool I've used. LinkRunner gives results in seconds, and it does that reliably. It gives me reliable results every time. Something that would normally take me an hour is done in less than a minute. That is very important for me because I'm in the healthcare industry, and time is very critical when I need to provide service to my healthcare professionals.

The technical capabilities of LinkRunner have allowed me to respond to problems a lot quicker. My resolution time has been reduced by 80% in some cases. Normally, I have to get a technician to go out, and on realizing there's a problem on the line, the technician would go to the help desk and report it and ask for a network specialist. I then have to get a network specialist, if he's available, and send him out to the site. He will then run a series of tests, log in to a switch, get to the switch room, and then do another test to find out what's the VLAN and if there's internet access. Now, I can have that technician who reported the problem just use LinkRunner to run one AutoTest, and that AutoTest tells my technician exactly what services are available and not available. If I need to do a fix, I have all the information I need to do that fix, and that could be done remotely because that technician can tell me what VLAN he's on, which switch he is connected to, and which port he is connected to without having to visit the switch room or comms room. In a nutshell, it has allowed me to reduce my ticket time by 80%.

It's very important that test results are automatically saved to NetAlly’s free Link-Live Cloud Service. I no longer have to rely on tests being saved by my technicians. Sometimes, test results are lost inadvertently, and then I have to revisit a site and retest. Being able to go online and get those results in real time and have them saved and compiled by LinkRunner's Link-Live service has been very valuable to me in building out my documentation for my sites. It has also been helpful in building out my documentation on trends on what has been my network performance. I can now look at my network performance and determine where I need to have improvements made. I can now save on my budgets, and I can now assign resources as I need to because LinkRunner gives me the ability to look at historical reports and have them all together in one piece in real-time.

The automatic uploading of test results saves me time. Normally, I have to wait until a test is done. Sometimes, the test is done on multiple floors of a building, and I have to wait till all those tests are done and my technician gets his or her computer, connects the device, and then uploads those test results to me. That could take hours. Now, with LinkRunner, with wireless connectivity, I can have those tests uploaded as soon as they are run. It means I can have the information I need almost immediately. I can now respond a lot quicker, which is very valuable to me.

It has made my network staff a lot more productive. My network staff spends less time troubleshooting little issues that could be fixed by a technician. My network staff has to work with fewer tools to fix a problem because LinkRunner does everything I need in one click. They no longer have to move up and down from a network drop up to a switch room, connect, and then go back down. They no longer have to work with a bunch of cables. They can just plug LinkRunner in and get the information needed, which is uploaded to Link-Live where I can view it, and my other technicians can view it. We can collaborate on results, and we can collaborate on ideas to fix a problem because that information is uploaded immediately and is available live to the entire team. It saves a lot of time, and it has improved my team's performance. They're very happy with it. In fact, I'm ordering more devices now because it saves a lot of time of my team from having to go back and forth. My site visits have decreased.

We are a system integrator, and we do lots of infra projects. It is a handheld device, and we are using it in a couple of scenarios. We use it for onsite troubleshooting and implementation. We also use it for performance testing. These are two major use cases. There are also other scenarios where some of its minor features are helpful.

I'm the owner of the company, and for me, my workflow is most valuable. Without such a tool, I have to spend time training engineers. If there are junior engineers, I have to tell them what are the necessary steps to do onsite testing, but doing that doesn't guarantee a standard workflow because different people interpret information and instructions in different ways, and also the way each engineer works is different. To check that something is working, some engineers might take extra steps to verify all the way to the application, web servers, and so on, whereas some engineers would just do the ping test. When I'm not on the site, I cannot see everything. With such a tool, we are able to have an SOP for troubleshooting. If any engineer goes outside to do troubleshooting or anything else, everything is standardized. All the reports are clear, and everyone follows the same steps. This makes everything very easy for us. If an engineer makes a mistake, the cost or damage is quite significant for us because we are dealing with the production network or live network. It is not a lab network where if you're not happy, you can shut down the server or network. In an actual customer environment, we have to be very careful. This is where LinkRunner proves helpful. It helps with SOPs and also saves a lot of time. With this tool, we can easily get a standardized process. With a single click, our engineers can get all the testing done. It also makes things easier for the management with the onsite activity reports, performance reports, and test results. It is easier to understand what they did and ensure that they really did their job, which saves time. It improves the quality of our jobs and provides a more efficient way of doing them.

It is helpful for performance testing. I have another tool called Cisco NSG, which is a wire and a Wi-Fi version compared to LinkRunner 10G. Recently I was helping one of the customers in Singapore, but their remote office is in Malaysia. When they ran the telco circuits between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, they complained about the users experiencing slowness, but nobody knew what was going on and why it was slow. I set up a point-to-point link, and what we experienced was really awesome. The Singapore site was using StarHub as the carrier, and the Malaysia site was using Telekom Malaysia as the local carrier. When the traffic crossed two different carriers, a carrier only did the testing for its own boundaries. In other words, if you want to do an end-to-end test function to Malaysia or vice versa, there is no proof of testing to tell if I have a private line with full megabits per second and what the performance looks like. Is there any packet loss or delay? There is no such report. Initially, as a typical user, if I feel something is slow, I would most probably think that the network is slow, and the telco is not good, but when we launched the test from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, everything was working fine in terms of the format. There was no packet loss, and this clearly gave a very good indication to the customer that it is not really due to the network, and they have to look into the application layer problems. This is the kind of issue we identify. The old-school style of doing a continuous ping from end-to-end is not really good enough, especially for such bidirectional traffic verification. It is very helpful there.

Similarly, we have another client, which is a US company, and they have a very big presence in Singapore. They have a big campus, a big office, and a colo data center. They have 10G end-to-end from all different campuses to the data center, office to the colo, and office to the campus. It came to the same question of how to ensure that the telco gives the 10G connectivity between different sites. This is another scenario where we used LinkRunner 10G with Cisco NSG. We do the end-to-end performance test, which gives a customer a lot of confidence to say that based on the testing results, they are convinced that the circuit is really up to the standard. From there, they can do more benchmarking for the QoS strategy. Traditional QoS testing is based on certain assumptions, but with such end-to-end testing, as an engineer, it is much easier for me to do the design based on traffic utilization. It helps customers a lot, and as their consultant or as their professional service partner, we are showcasing how we leverage the technology and tools to easily troubleshoot and make it faster for them to go live with their projects. In both these scenarios, it has been really helpful for customers. It saves their time. Even though things have opened up a bit after the COVID lockdown, it has not been easy to travel everywhere to do the outside work. We can ship LinkRunner 10G to the site and the customer can just hook it up on the network. We can then do remote control and all the necessary tests. It has made life much easier.

We do different types of projects. For instance, nowadays, we do lots of WiFi projects. From the WiFi vendor perspective, they are pushing WiFi 6 technology with m-gig switches, UPOE switches, and so on. Customers often ask why it is necessary to invest in a high-cost switch with m-gig and UPOE, and if they do invest, how can they validate this. Every cent spent by an IT department is scrutinized by the finance department. So, they want to make sure that whatever they have invested in the infra can do the job. This is where we use the tool and connect to the switch to validate whether they are really running as expected. Especially when they hook up with WiFi access AP and m-gig technologies, we need to validate the aggregated speed at which the AP can go. This is one of the scenarios where we have helped quite a number of customers.

We have also been supporting some banking customers, especially the server teams, for the link-level testing. They need to have a 10G connectivity from the server to the switch, but sometimes, due to certain limitations, they aren't able to get the speed that they want. It commonly leads to a situation where the server team starts to point the finger at the networking team thinking that their network switch is not really able to support a certain speed for their server to be able to run all the applications. This is another scenario where LinkRunner is helpful. If the customer has a certain link requirement or connectivity speed requirement, we can use LinkRunner to validate the servers and switches and make sure that everything is working well before they connect to each other. This is how we ensure that everybody is using the same tools to validate, and there are no variations in terms of the different testing standards so that everybody is convinced. This is a good tool to have a standard workflow so that there is no misunderstanding and miscommunication.

Usually, it is used for brownfield or greenfield deployments, but it has also been helpful for mature networks. Recently, I went to one of the major data center operators in Singapore, and their pain point was that they don't know how those infra switches are connected. They used another vendor, and their vendor walked away after a number of years. There were no updated documents. A lot of information was not updated. They engaged us as a consultant to have a better understanding of their environment, inventories, and connectivity. We leveraged the discovery feature of LinkRunner to get the visibility of all the infra in the data center. We could also log into those devices through the LinkRunner device. Instead of carrying the laptop with LinkRunner and multiple tools with different consoles, we could do everything with LinkRunner.

It is a very effective tool. LinkRunner runs on the Android platform. So, I can push a lot of tools or apps on it through the Link-Live cloud. I once went on a customer site to do some troubleshooting, and I could launch Cisco WebEx on LinkRunner and I could share the screen. So, anybody who joined the session remotely could see how I troubleshoot. I have done this twice to train my junior engineers, and at the same time, the customer also sees how I am troubleshooting. It has totally changed the traditional way of troubleshooting in a data center where we had to bring tools to the data center and use a phone to take a photo. Some data centers are very strict, and we are not allowed to bring any cameras in. So, I had to take screenshots. Later on, I had to save those screenshots into proper files and recall what I'd done and which pictures I'd captured. With LinkRunner and its integrated tools, I can just launch Cisco WebEx. I can have a video call, or I can have a voice call over the unit. I can share the screen so that everybody can watch it. Some people can give a better suggestion, which could help in resolving a problem faster. I usually joke that in the old days, it was more like a solo process, and now, it is a collaborative way of troubleshooting, especially in a very complicated environment.

Troubleshooting-wise, it is pretty handy for me. Laptops have many types of software, but there are lots of limitations with laptops. I prefer to use specific tools. For example, when we do the infra project for certain government agencies and banks, there is no way we can log into the device. We are not authorized to log into the device. With LinkRunner, I can connect to the switch without logging. I can easily get information without logging into the device. I can get information about the switch hostname, the VLAN, the port I'm connected to, and the speed mode. I had a customer, which is a US company, and they had two Cisco switches. They wanted me to take a look at their settings, but the local guy didn't have the privileges to log into the equipment. So, I just connected LinkRunner to the unit, and from there, I could get all the information about the switch host, management IP, the port and the VLAN I'm connecting to, etc. I could get information about whether PoE is enabled. I could get all this information without logging in.

By using this tool, I could identify a customer issue within just five minutes. One of their switches was a one gig box, but it was hard coded with 100 Mbps. When I asked them, the customer recalled reducing the speed to avoid an issue that they were facing. This is the beauty of the tool. I have been in the IT industry long enough. In the old days, we had to log into the switch, and we had to use a lot of show command filters to get the information we wanted, which took time, whereas this tool significantly saves time. When we are dealing with customers, it is not about whether you can or cannot fix a problem like in the old days. It is about how quickly you can fix the problems. People have less and less patience. We can fix the issues without such tools, and lots of experienced engineers still can do it, but using such a tool significantly accelerates the troubleshooting process.

It has reduced the troubleshooting time, especially in a campus network and data center network, by 30%. It has made our networking staff more productive.

From a testing point of view, it is good enough. A lot of enhanced features can be applied. Sometimes, when we do greenfield installation, we need to do all the necessary testing and reporting. We are not doing the cabling work, but after the cabling contractors finish the work, we need to verify the connectivity to the switch. We have to go to every individual port, do the test, and document all the port IDs, location information, testing date, etc. This is where we leverage LinkRunner. It is much easier than in the old days when we had two engineers: one carrying the laptop and the other one carrying an A4 paper for writing. After that, we would put everything into Excel and print it out, which is not effective. LinkRunner integrates with Link-Live. So, the information about everything you are testing is available online on the cloud. You can generate a very nice report for the end-users, which is a really significant improvement. It saves a lot of time and prevents human errors. Sometimes, the engineer is in a rush, and a handwritten document is not that easy to interpret. After a while, they might not recognize a number written down, and they have to go back to check again. With such a tool, all this rework can be eliminated.

The test results can be automatically uploaded to the Link-Live Cloud Service. I prefer to save everything on Link-Live, but sometimes, because of customer restrictions, we need to have a local copy. With Link-Live, even if you don't have internet connectivity, you can save the results locally, and the next time you have internet connectivity, it will push all the results to Link-Live. It is helpful for me because after my engineers finish a job and upload the result to Link-Live, I can log in to the portal from anywhere to take a look at the result and understand the problems. Sometimes, I also put some comments when I upload the data to Link-Live. It optimizes my time. We have so many projects running concurrently, and I cannot follow engineers everywhere to do the work. Link-Live is a way to help me to understand my staff's productivity in the field. I can see the real-time results and understand the environment. It gives me a lot of visibility and productivity improvement. 

We have a lot of the normal LinkRunners, and we have the 10Gig ones called LinkRunner 10G Professional Kit that we use to determine connectivity for plug-and-play. We use the Cisco DNA Center. So, the polarity needs to be right and the link needs to be up. We usually test it with LinkRunner, and then we bring the switch up, and it automatically discovers it.

It provides a way to test 10Gig connectivity. Previously, we had to hook up a switch. That was our only way. Now, with LinkRunner, we can test on the fly if an SFP is bad or if the switch has the right configuration on it.

It makes the network validation and configuration of copper and fiber Ethernet networks drastically easier. It definitely cuts down a lot of time. We can also use the old LinkRunners, but the 10Gig one definitely cuts down a lot of time to verify VLANs and connectivity and do a cable test. 

We use it all the time. It is one tool that you can bring with you that will most likely do whatever you need. If you need to tone a cable that's not plugged in, it'll tone it. Once you find it, if you need to know when the switchboard is on, it will do that for you. It will tell you the VLAN it is on. We use it to briefly test and make sure a cable is getting a 1 Gbps link, and it is not a 100 Mbps or half duplex or anything like that. We even use it for labeling to tone out ports. It is definitely the only tool you would need to do most of what you can do. Some of the tools do it better, but for the all-in-one, we have definitely found nothing that comes close to it.

We use the AutoTest feature the most. That's the one that lets you know whether a VLAN doesn't have an IP address at a gateway. We use that feature all the time. A computer would only get you half of that information. You could get the IP address and the gateway, and that's about it. You would still need some other way to get the switch information. You'd have to go on the switch and trace down the switch to get that. So, having just one central point to grab everything really cuts down on time.

We have a lot of key members who use it. We have a lot of VLANs throughout our network, and usually, we have issues such as the port not being on the VLAN on which the client needs it. With the LinkRunner AutoTest, in about five seconds, we can get the information about the port, what VLAN it is on now, and what VLAN it should be on. It can be done in seconds, whereas previously, you'd have to rely on documentation or look for the MAC address, but this makes it insanely faster.

It has absolutely reduced our troubleshooting time. The amount of information that you can quickly grab with this device is amazing. It has saved two to three hours a day on average.

It has made our networking staff more productive. It takes less time to get the simple information, and you can move on to other things. It definitely impacts our staff's productivity.

My primary use case is validating jacks:  typically, fiber connecting to desktop jacks. We cross-connect in the IDF, install a patch cord running to the end station and, before I plug that patch cord into the PC with its 10-gig NIC, I want to verify that the path is working correctly.

Sometimes we have connected the patch cord in the IDF to the wrong strands:  LinkRunner tells us (doesn't display link). Ditto if we have polarity incorrect.  [The Fluke FiberLert is another useful tool in this situation -- it tells you which strand(s) are transmitting light.]  Once we have location and polarity done correctly, the LinkRunner 10G will report 'link up' as part of its AutoTest.  Then, just like all the models of LinkRunner, it will report on the negotiated speed & duplex, listen for CDP/LLDP announcements in order to offer details about the attached switch, report in any VLAN tagging, acquire a DHCP address, ping the resulting default router and DNS servers, and finally ping a remote target, for us, typically www.google.com, all of which validates the higher level network path & services.

We can, and have, done all this with the PC itself, of course, but when things aren't working, you aren't sure whether the issue lies inside the PC, with its NIC, driver, and its configuration, or inside the the network infrastructure.  Furthermore, your colleague in desktop support, or the end-user themselves, aren't always available to contribute the PC portion.  With the LinkRunner, once you have a successful AutoTest, you can walk away knowing that you have successfully delivered the network infrastructure, and that remaining issues are concentrated in the end-station.

We have a bunch of fiber optic to desktop connections, and getting all those pieces right:  installing the cross-connect in the IDF, cleaning the glass ends, polarity, the correct switch in the IDF, VLAN assignment, can take a couple hours. A tool like this can drop that down to 20 minutes. Saving that kind of time once a week makes it worth its cost to my management.

LinkRunner 10G reduces troubleshooting time by a factor of 10. I don't know what I would do without it, particularly the 10-Gbps capability. I suppose I would have to carry around a small-form factor PC equipped with a 10-gig NIC. That would be laborious, when compared to carrying the hand-held LinkRunner.

We also use the LinkRunner 10G when building fiber pathways between network infrastructure elements -- between switches located on different floors or between buildings:  again, it verifies Layers 1-2:  that we have installed patch cords in the appropriate places all the way through the various fiber patch panels, have polarity correct, have the appropriate optics installed in the appropriate switch ports.

It makes our networking staff more productive because then they can do other things, rather than spending their time on low-level validation.

Typically, I use it for identifying fiber connections to make sure that we have solid links in both directions. I like the bandwidth (iperf) built in testing. If only carrying the LR10G, you can use the JuiceSSH to access switches.

It is a good tool for what we are using it for. We're probably not using its full capability. We just use it for testing fiber connections when we're setting up new switches. It does that very well, with indicators. We typically do trunking, and it does not give much information on the trunk. It just lets us know that it's making a valid connection, and for my portion of my job, that's all that is required.

I use the AutoTest feature. If you are in a Cisco environment, it can give you information all the way to the port level, such as if it is a trunk port and which VLAN it is. It can test all the way out to the internet if that port allows DHCP. This information is absolutely important to us.

It reduces troubleshooting time. It saves about four hours on the job.

It makes our networking staff more productive. It has saved about 15 hours per month.

My primary use cases are plugging into a port to determine what switch it is, the name of the switch, what VLANs are on it, and to test if there is a correct connection or even a correct termination on both sides.

LinkRunner's ability to simplify network validation is pretty good. I just recently started using the telnet feature and it is helpful because previously, I had to carry a laptop with all of the correct connections set up. I no longer have to. As long as I have the IP address, I can directly connect to the hardware and make the changes.

Using it means that instead of having to use several pieces of equipment, I now just need one to do all that I need at any given point.

It has definitely helped in terms of saving time and costs, as well as improving efficiency. My time savings is pretty significant. Some of my calls are pretty quick but if I didn't have the tool, they would take longer. Calls that took me between an hour and an hour and a half, now take about 15 minutes. 

From the point of testing all the way through to the switch, including DHCP and DNS, this solution is very important. It eliminates half the problems that I have when testing.

Recently, we had a problem with fiber connections and determining our slowness on campus. When it comes to easy stuff like going from a client to a switch, it's very easy to find it and it's not a problem. When it goes to DHCP and out to the internet, it is great and again, not a problem. However, when we're trying to diagnose why there's slowness on campus, that's pretty hard to figure out, even with this specific tool.

In terms of the speed at which LinkRunner provides results, it's really good. It is one of the better tools I've used in a long time. It gives me everything at a glance and I can just give it to somebody in the field, and they can do it themselves remotely. Then, I can see the data back at my end, and make the appropriate changes.

I use LinkRunner for new deployment testing environments to validate solutions and to prove to us and our clients that we're delivering what they're looking for. LinkRunner provides us with all the relevant information we need, test results, and validates everything that we've done.

The tools are shared across our team, which is about eight people.

The number of bulk test tools that we carried is reduced from three bags to one tiny bag. That's an improvement. We manage only one or two devices in theory versus 10 different pieces of test equipment for 10 different results and variables. It's helped our company a lot.

LinkRunner generates a report that summarizes everything, so we don't have to pull all the results from different tests, put it together, make sense of it, and then talk to the client about it. We can customize a single report with a company's value-adds, which saves a lot of time.

NetAlly's free Link-Live Cloud Service is a highlight of our use case, especially because most of the other tools that we use don't have a cloud platform. It allows us to save test results. We've had situations where a client requested to see those test results because we didn't provide them originally. It was definitely a face-saving stage because we were able to pull the report easily from the cloud platform.

The solution's ability to simplify network validation and configuration of copper and fiber Ethernet networks is absolutely brilliant. It would have taken us an hour to run those tests on individual test tools with a dedicated toolkit. LinkRunner has one tool to achieve all this, so we can do everything within 10-15 minutes for the same amount of tests. There has been a huge time reduction. Running tests multiple times across different individual pieces of the network reduces time as well.

It helps us streamline workflows. There are specific tools for test reasons or validations, so if we did this with any other tool, we would've spent many hours doing individual tests. Because we're doing it in one go with LinkRunner, we save a lot of time. We have a one-panel view, which allows us to see everything, cleanly summarizes it, and points out where the problems are. It's highly relevant and highly useful, especially for a network engineer.

We use LinkRunner's AutoTest feature a lot. The AutoTest feature shows us the connectivity status. It picks up the DHCP IP. It saves us a lot of time because we don't have to manually configure things.

The AutoTest feature on its own is just a part of the puzzle. It's one piece that allows us to make sure we have physical connectivity. It's more time-saving than anything else. The AutoTest feature alone doesn't meet all of our needs, but together with the AutoTest performances, iPerf, etc., it works very well.

LinkRunner is easy to use and saves a lot of time. It's programmed so that all the usual tasks are automated, which means we don't have to select variables, values, etc.

LinkRunner's speed in providing results is very good.

The solution automatically uploads test results to Link-Live Cloud Service, which definitely saves us time. The only downside is that we have to manually select "Upload It." I wish that piece was automated more than anything else, including graphs. I couldn't find that feature, but it's been pretty straightforward to use other than that.

The solution has definitely reduced troubleshooting time. About 70% of our time and effort has been reduced.

Our networking staff is more productive because of this solution. They have time to focus on other things. 

My use cases revolve around determining 

• how much PoE power is coming out
• if I have the port configured so that it will present me with an IP address for that access point
• what port that I have it plugged into on the switch.

I use it for other things as well, but those are the day-to-day uses, 98 percent of the time.

I plug in the unit and it will tell me good things like how much PoE power is coming out and whether it can support one of the fanciest wireless access points. In addition, I will know if I have the port configured so that it will present me with an IP address for that access point, and what port I have it plugged into on the switch.

I don't necessarily need to take a laptop with me anymore. I like that I don't have to carry multiple tools to do the basic job of knowing if the cable is good, or if the port or network is available to do the job. It reduces the amount of equipment you need.

The ability to streamline installation and triage is helpful. For example, I had a job where I rewired a room. I had all the cables going to the network closet and terminated all of them. I plugged them all into the network switch, and then it was a matter of going from port to port to port in that room to see whether or not they all had basic connectivity. The results I was able to get with LinkRunner met my "hurry up, let's see if they all work" requirement so that I could put the room and all the furniture back together quickly.

In terms of troubleshooting, it helps when it comes to PoE. If I need a Class 3 or Class 4 level of power, meaning I need all 30 watts to be coming out of my network switch to be able to boot up an access point, I can plug the unit into a network jack and it will tell me if that jack is presenting the amount of power necessary. If not, it will tell me what it did put out. That lets me know there's either something wrong with the cable or the cable run is too long to present the needed power over that distance.

Another example where it helped with troubleshooting was in pulling up IP and DNS. I found out that at a particular site I was actually getting my responses for DCP and DNS from my failover site, not from the primary. That let me know that there was something wrong. When I looked into it in more detail, I found out that the response time was slower from the local server than it was from the remote server. That clued me in that I needed to tell somebody about that.

If I compare the time it takes me now, versus my old mindset of four years ago, to do a single job, LinkRunner has cut it down to about one-third of the time. It has made me more productive.