cable tracer picking up local radio station

[Mr_Ned_Flanders]

Hello, Good Neighbors!  I just started a new job, working in a mostly Cisco/Windows environment over Cat5, with various wireless AP's scattered around the area, and have noticed serious, generally intermittent slowness on the LAN.  I understand there's about a bajillion possible reasons for slowness, but I'm wondering if one reason is crosstalk....

When using a cable tracer/toner to find a cable's end recently, I heard audible FM radio coming out of the toner speaker.  Subsequent testing revealed this occurs in several different wiring closets, including the cat5 just prior to where it plugs into the PC's.

This can't be good, can it?  Seems like that's crosstalk, with resultant degradation of the lan/wan traffic.

So is this a problem?  And is the solution to ensure all equipment is properly grounded?

Thanks in advance!

[Leo Laohoo]

I understand there's about a bajillion possible reasons for slowness

Slowness in wired or wireless?

Crosstalk can potentially cause issues.  But you need to investigate further like are there are line errors observed from the interface of the switch?

What model is your switch?

If you ping, say, one PC to another PC over the wired network (large packets) are the ping times erratic?

[Mr_Ned_Flanders]

This occurs at different places, but it appears we have quite a few Nortel Baystack 450-24t's, connecting via a Catalyst 4507r with a couple 48port switch modules in it.

I do want to bump into the relevant switch(es) and check for errors, but need to get access info from my coworkers (I'm that new to this position).

I ask about the FM Radio and grounding, because my new coworkers assure me that is not a problem, and they have not routinely grounded things.

Let me check error counters next, but I'm really curious about the FM radio.