OneTouch AT Network Assistant Reviews

OneTouch is used for cable and network testing. 

OneTouch is a simple one-touch cable and fiber testing tool.

OneTouch is an entry-level testing tool that's coming to the end of its life, I believe, so it has limitations. For example, it can only test up to 1 gig of network speed. It would be helpful if they increased that to 10 gigs. 

It is also limited in the number of IP targets you can test. If you want to test how many hops or different sites, you should be able to hit a test button and say, "Right then, test these 20 IP addresses to see if I can reach them." It only does up to 10. Most of NetAlly's other devices, like the G2, can do unlimited addresses.

I've been using OneTouch for about four or five years.

There is no scalability for OneTouch. If you want to do other things with it, you can't. You can update the firmware on it, but it doesn't do any other testing processes. It's purely a cable and fiber tester.

The support is somewhat hit or miss because of the different time zones. You have to wait if you are on-site and need to answer a quick question. 

OneTouch is easy to set up. You just plug it in, enter your details, and off you go. It only takes a few minutes as long as you've got Link-Live access or network access. 

You have to pay for the device and an annual license to keep the software updated. The devices cost around £2,000 to £2,500 and the licensing fee is between £400 and £500.

I rate OneTouch AT Network Assistant seven out of 10.

The training features are very valuable for me. The training can run 24 hours or 48 hours, and be automatically uploaded to a dashboard. I can see when things go wrong while I'm gone. I can just address that issue as soon as I get back to the office.

It improved my ability to see if there's any issue happening.

During the normal workweek, I can just find the training from over the weekend to see if I can duplicate the issue that happened and address it.

The dashboard is one area with room for improvement. Before, it was a product from Fluke; now it's been bought by NetScout. I really would like to see graphics on the dashboard. Right now, there are no graphics. It only shows raw data, and it's kind of hard to decipher what it means. If I see it, I can do that, but if I'm not here and we need somebody else to read the data to me, it is a little more challenging. The GUI should be colorful, the way it was before. That's one thing.

Another thing is it would have been better if they had embedded a management WiFi antenna. If you are in a location where there's no internet cable available, you're going to have to buy your own USB WiFi receiver in order to manage it remotely.

Sometimes, I know the IP address I'm looking for, or sometimes I know the host name I'm looking for. On the Fluke, the software, there's no search box. I cannot search by IP address, or host name. I have to scroll over thousands of addresses to find what I'm looking for.

I have been using it for almost a year.

It has not crashed to the point where it was unusable. It has crashed a couple of times, and then it will rectify itself. Sometimes, the boot process didn't complete totally; it will reboot again. It's just minor stuff, not anything preventing me from using the product.

I have not called support yet. I used the support when it belonged to Fluke. I haven't called NetScout yet.

We use to have another small Fluke product, WireMapper; nothing fancy. Prior to that, we didn't use any network testing tools or advanced software.

We were implementing our voice over IP system. When I saw one of the guys use a Fluke to test the fiber connection, I told myself, "Well, if I had this product, I could improve things; things would be a lot faster and smoother."

The setup was not too bad, but the licensing was a little bit of trouble to get it straightened out. The licensing is a one-time obligation, of course. As long as I talked to the right person, it was sorted out.

Have a plan. Know what you are looking for and what you want to do with it. You don’t want to have a product that cost a couple thousand dollars sitting on your desk doing nothing. If you don't have a need for it, there's no point investing on an expensive product and not knowing how to use it or use it at all.

The most valuable feature is how they're rugged.

Also valuable is the Gold support, which I've always gotten. That's always saved me in so many ways; being able to get another device when the other one's broken and shipped in for maintenance.

The biggest improvement to my organization is with the LinkRunner 2000AT; that one has saved so much time for troubleshooting. Instead of having to get it up and down, up and down. Testing cables end to end. It allows me to test the cable by myself. Cutting out a half-hour’s worth of work down to minutes. I was able to justify it at my last three jobs, by having that much time saved for me to do troubleshooting. Whether it be the fiber or the copper, I can troubleshoot a lot easier just from one touch on the button. I’m able to map out whether it's a wearing problem, connector problem, somewhere in the middle, or if I need to look into it further. It helps me do initial troubleshooting a whole lot faster.

The RJ45 jack on top of the Linkrunner has not been able to handle the constant usage at my last location and current employer. With all of the unplugging and plugging in it would cease to function and I have sent them in for repair under Gold Support. I don’t know if it was the solder joints breaking on the board, the copper connections in the RJ45 or something else.

When I say that we use the Linkrunner a lot I’m not exaggerating. We use it daily and probably plug/unplug around 10-20 times easily.

I've been using Fluke products for almost 20 years.

On a daily basis we would use it, easily, five to ten times totally, for everybody in the shop. We use more than just testing the cable; we'll do the LLDP, for getting the port information for the switch, doing the testing out to the real world, for the auto test and similar items. We use it a lot. That's just LinkRunner; we also have the OneTouch that we use for the wireless, as well, and for the throughput tests.

Not once have I ever had a stability issue. It's always been a physical problem with the RJ45 connector.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. I've never had an issue, software-wise.

Technical support has always been the best that I can give you. When I call, they're right there. You don't have to sit on an automated system forever. You talk to somebody and they get you taken care of or, shortly after, they call you back with a fix or you start the turn-in process and do it that way.

Back in the early 90s it was just the basic telephone tracing devices that you could use. Then in the mid90s, I started using Fluke; ever since then, it's what I've used 99.99% of the time, because it's always been reliable for me. In fact, I've got one of the original Fluke discs from something like 1985, from the Johnson Manufacturing Company, that's on my desk. I've got one of the old 5 1/4" discs.

I’m a big fan of Fluke, because it's always been there for me.

If you've never touched it before, with a getting started guide, a quick watch on a YouTube channel, or something like that, you could use it.

For a user like me, it's all been similar throughout all the years; it's all been kind of similar. They've kept the similarities and a lot of the same settings. It's nice for familiarity like that.

Before choosing this product, I really did not evaluate other options. 99% of the time that I've ever been able to order something, it's through the experience and justification that I had is why we got it. I've stuck with it because it just seems like other products are more complex or people have issues with them. That's why I've never really looked for anything else.

For any of the products, make sure it's going to do what you need it to do. Don't get it just because of the bells and whistles. You know, why buy a Ferrari if you're only going to drive an eighth of a mile to work, that kind of thing.

Fluke’s not cheap, but you get what you pay for.

Out of all the years, with the few issues I've had – no matter what product you have, you're going to have issues – I have to give it a perfect rating.

If you want to trace out where a cable's plugged in, you can plug it into the Fluke. It'll trace out the length of the cable. It'll tell you what port that it's plugged into on the switch. It'll give you all the analysis of the network of what that port's doing and the IP address.

I honestly don't know if there is any room for improvement. They've gotten better over the years. It's all tied to a web interface now, so I think they're going in the right direction.

Pricing, but you take what you get.

In my building, we only have about 15 people.

They've always worked good for us. We've never had any stability issues with them.

I think it's stable in terms of workload. I probably bought a unit that's overkill for the number of people I'm supporting. If we grow in the future, it should be able to ramp up with us.

I'd say technical support is a 10/10. I've only really had to deal with them once or twice to get software updates.

We've always used Fluke for doing network diagnostics. Everywhere I've ever been, all they’ve ever had was Fluke. Whether it's network, or power diagnostics, it's all Fluke devices.

I wouldn't say an end user would be able to use the device. They wouldn't even know what they're looking at.

I think they're a little steep on the pricing side, but you take what you get.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options. We just went with Fluke. It's all we've been using. I decided to stick with it.

The advice I’d give to others looking into implementing this product would be positive. It just depends on what you’re going to be using it for. The applications we use it for, for troubleshooting, work well for us. It just depends on who's going to be doing what with it.

For me, it's easy to use. It always gives me accurate information. It's never crashed or had issues.

It is pretty big, but the way it's designed, you can pull the module off, and put a different type of module on to do other stuff. So I don't know how small they could shrink that thing into.

All of the features are important.

Quick network diagnostics: I could plug it into a network and within a minute – actually, less than a minute; about 15-30 seconds – it tells me if it can get an IP address, if it can get to the gateway, if it can't get out to the internet. If I have a smart switch, it will even tell me which port I'm plugged into.

It depends on what the problem was. Let's say a user couldn't get out to the internet. I could unplug the cable from the back of their computer, and plug the Fluke in. Again, it's going to give me whether or not I can connect to the internet or not, so it breaks down whether it's the computer or the cable. If it is something with the cabling, it can even tell me if there's a break in the cable, and how far down the cable it is. If it makes it to the switch, I could tell what port it's plugged into; so simple things, too. If I go in a room and they want to find out what switch something is plugged into for whatever reason, I could plug the LRAT into the wall, into a port, and it's going to tell me if it's plugged into a switch, and what port it's plugged into.

It interacts well with other Fluke products. It even has a cloud component to it, so if I do a scan on a network I plug into a jack, it's going to give me all this information on the screen, but it's also going to send me an email and it's also going to post it to the cloud. If I'm working on one client and I'm troubleshooting a lot of cabling ports, I can go through, run the test, run the test. I'm not taking notes; I'm not having to jot things down into an Excel spreadsheet or anything. I can just test, test, test, test, and then at the end of the day, I can actually go online and print out a report of all the ports I tested, where they're plugged into the switch, and give it to the client.

I have an LRAT and I've been using it for two years.

I have 120 accounts and my largest account has 500 users.

With the LRAT, I have not encountered any stability issues. With my Fluke OneTouch, I did encounter stability issues. I had quite a few problems with that at one point and I had to contact Fluke support, which is very good, by the way. It took a little while to resolve it, but it was resolved and it was a problem with the programming. They took care of it, and now it works great again.

The one problem had to do with this one site which is a very large site. I know they take care of a smaller component of it, but it's tied into about 27 sites across the country. When I was doing a scan with the OneTouch, previously it worked fine. I was trying to troubleshoot something. It's a TV station; they do a lot of streaming, so there's a lot of traffic on the wire. It started crashing, so I contacted Fluke, we opened a case and we got it resolved. They pretty much stayed on top of it.

Technical support is 9/10. It’s not cheap, but it is good, the turnaround time. The problem I had was a very unique issue, and it did take a little while to get it resolved. A couple times there was a holiday in the middle there, so it got dropped a couple times, but they stayed on top of it.

I was using a JDSU, which can do some network troubleshooting. It's good for testing cable, it tells you if you can get out to the internet, but when we started getting into more and more smart switches, more and more higher end equipment, it wasn't as useful. I would constantly be having to break out my laptop to pick up the slack.

It's very easy to set up, but along with everything else, you have to be able to interpret the results, although this is pretty straightforward. It can get out to the internet, but it helps if you have some networking experience. If you have any networking experience at all, this thing would be very easy to set up.

There's not a whole lot on the market that is comparable to Fluke products, in my opinion, anyway. It's really hard to compare apples to apples. Fluke makes a good product that is rather unique in the marketplace, in my opinion. It does a really good job, it's not cheap. That's one of the drawbacks, too. I've gotten now to where I've changed my billing scale for when I bring out Fluke equipment for troubleshooting, to help compensate for the expense of it.

Purchase the support. It's very easy to implement, as I’ve mentioned. If you've got some basic background in networking, TCP/IP, it's very easy to implement. Basically the meter, you turn it on and plug it in. Just plug it into a network and it's going to give you some information. What you do with that information, though, is where having some experience with networking comes in handy.

I've been very happy. It has gotten me some jobs, because I've been able to come in a troubleshoot things that no one else has been able to.