I mean, the simplest answer is to lay a new cable, and that is definitely what I am going to do - that’s not my question.

But this is a long run, and it would be neat if I could salvage some of that cable. How can I discover where the cable is damaged?

One stupid solution would be to halve the cable and crimp each end, and then test each new cable. Repeat iteratively. I would end up with a few broken cables and a bunch of tested cables, but they might be short.

How do the pro’s do this? (Short of throwing the whole thing away!)

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37 points

Higher end cable testers can show you where the break is, but it will be far more expensive that a new cable.

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15 points

My TP link switch can detect faults and cable length. I’m not sure it can do both together but it’s possible. Worth checking if you have a switch with those features

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4 points

Hmm, interesting! I have a Synology switch, gotta read up on its capabilities.

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3 points

you can rent a time domain reflectometer for this purpose… it sends out a signal and then listens for the echos back and calculates the distance. problem is they arent accurate the first like 500 feet so you have to add a reel of 500 ft of matching cable to the end first. electrorent.com rents them.

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1 point

I had an AMD Phenom-II era motherboard that claimed it would be able to do that. OP, you might be able to find an old NIC/mobo that could do this for cheap.

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