April 07, 2022

Fluke Etherscope

Verified User

Supervisor in Information Technology

Education Management Company, 1001-5000 employees

Score 7 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In a network outage, we used the Fluke Networks Etherscope to troubleshoot wireless issues and hardwired connections. It’s great for a junior admin to run several preconfigured diagnostics tests while a more senior admin is consoled into the switches running. It’s one of many tools that help with quickly identifying problems with the network and fixing them.

Pros and Cons

Wireless Performance
LAN Health Audit
Copper and Fiber tests

Battery life
Touch screen is slow to respond.
Operating System is slow.

Likelihood to Recommend

We used ours mainly to test the wireless. Wireless could be several different things so the preconfigured tests on this device allowed us to quickly eliminate certain areas and allowed us to focus on the real problem. It’s easy enough a PC Technician could use it.

Most Important Features

Copper and Fiber Tests
Wireless Surveys
Link Tests

Return on Investment

Very expensive for small business or school districts.
Battery Life is terrible not able to use it for an entire day.

Other Software Used

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (npm), Cisco Prime LAN Management Solution, Lansweeper

November 04, 2021

Fluke Networks Etherscope performance and flexibility review

Garry Bowers

Network System Administrator

La Porte Community School Corp. (Education Management, 501-1000 employees)

Score 10 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have used the Fluke Networks Etherscope across our entire District to test and verify network drops, performance and connectivity issues. We have used it to verify info on our wireless network as well. Our IT department is responsible for not only connectivity at each site, meaning desktops, notebooks and Chromebooks but we are also responsible for site to site connectivity. When we have receive calls or emails that staff and students are having connectivity and network performance issues we use the Fluke Networks Etherscope. It is a great resource to isolate local network drop issues. We often use it to confirm and verify our connectivity over the WAN links. During critical times of the year, meaning online testing we can't afford to have network disruptions either at the local level or the district WAN level. The Fluke Networks Etherscope lets us solve problems both on our copper wired network and our fiber trunk feeds pretty quickly.

Pros and Cons

The Fluke Networks Etherscope can test network speed performance on copper and fiber networks
The Fluke Networks Etherscope can detect network switches and also available and active ports.
The Fluke Networks Etherscope can check for bandwidth between two points quick and easy.

The Fluke Networks Etherscope does not accommodate testing or working with 10 GB networks.
Hopefully the Fluke Networks Etherscope will continue to expand it's support of Wireless networks and the new technology that is coming out.
While not being a major issue, it would be nice to have the ability to print out summary reports direct from the Fluke Networks Etherscope.

Likelihood to Recommend

Fluke Networks Etherscope is really in it's element when troubleshooting and diagnosing connectivity issues. It is an excellent tool for example if you have an end user or even an entire room (lab) of computers that have lost all connectivity or are experiencing serious performance issues, mostly speed. You can start at the end user (or one of the lab computers in a lab environment) and begin to test and sample the network infrastructure. It can locate line breaks, or identify the location of even a bad connector. It does work very well in a wireless environment as well, but is just a bit more cumbersome to get it exactly where it needs to be so you can see results that actually show you what may be causing the problem.

Most Important Features

The Etherscope does an excellent job tracking and locating line breaks and disruptions.
The Etherscope works very well at identifying wireless bottlenecks (lack of service) as well as LAN bottlenecks to the Access Points.
The Etherscope does an excellent job of identifying RF coverage and capturing noise ratio in a Wireless Environment.

Return on Investment

Fluke Networks Etherscope has been beneficial for our environment because we can do an enormous amount of in-house testing now and do not have to outsource the work.
Fluke Networks Etherscope allows us to quickly locate and isolate issues both on the network on at the client-side with the excellent testing ability it offers.
Fluke Networks Etherscope allows us to quickly discover devices on our network so we can identify foreign devices that have been connected and utilizing our bandwidth.
We have not really experienced any negative impact with using this powerful too.

Alternatives Considered

We briefly tested a NetAlly LSPRNTR-300 LinkSprinter 300 Network Tester with WIFI and Distance to Cable Fault Indication and it was a worthy testing unit it but we quickly discovered that it did not offer the large range of testing in both the copper and fiber network drops, nor was it as complete with regard to wireless testing. But in it's defense it was not quite as pricy as the Fluke.

Other Software Used

PRTG Network Monitor, SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA), Spiceworks Connectivity Dashboard

Operating Systems	Unspecified
Mobile Application	No

Fluke Networks Etherscope

PingPlotter

MxToolBox

Paragon Insights

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SourceForge Speed Test

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

VMware Skyline

LinkSprinter Network Tester

Paragon Active Assurance (Netrounds)

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