Patent ID: 8461848

Claim:
A method for cable diagnostics for a network system, the method comprising: generating two or more auto-negotiation pulses; transmitting the two or more auto-negotiation pulses over a cable; receiving, at a receiver, reflections of the two or more auto-negotiation pulses; buffering the reflections of the two or more auto-negotiation pulses at a time after transmission of each pulse to form a received signal; filtering the received signal to create a filtered signal; identifying a near end echo corresponding to one of the two or more auto-negotiation pulses, wherein identifying the near end echo comprises detecting a first reflection having a first reflected value greater than a near end threshold, wherein the near end threshold is proportional to a noise level; removing the near end echo from the filtered signal; applying a threshold to the filtered signal to identify one or more reflections, wherein the one or more reflections correspond to the two or more auto-negotiation pulses; and processing the one or more reflections to evaluate the cable.