In the world of specialized test equipment, $20k isn't too bad at all. It's a certainly still a lot of money in absolutes, but the barrier to entry is simple very high for this class of kit. The sales volume is low and the engineering to do precise work with RF signals at these kinds of frequencies is complex. The people doing the work of designing, building, and getting this stuff into the hands of end-users still need enough money to live healthy lives.

And $20,000 is five figures, so an off-the-cuff six figure estimate is an error of an order of magnitude. That's quite a large error.

But to bring it all back 'round again: The oft-repeated suggestion that a $40 device can do the same job represents an error of 3 or more orders of magnitude. :)

Some of the stuff in this cheaper class of kit can observe what happens in terms of voltage and/or current on the wire between two devices, some of them can have a chat with a cable and/or a device on their own to see what they state of their capabilities (as this software does), and some of them can also test things like DC continuity. That's useful, but it doesn't help to grade the actual signal characteristics of the cable.

There's a galaxy of difference between DC and a 40 GHz symbol rate.

> Decent quality cable testers can be had for like $20,000.

See the discusison linked to.

Trust me, my interest was piqued by that thread and I went down the rabbit warren with Mr Google and spent far too much time on the subject. I looked at the various manufacturers and the setups required.

TL;DR: To start with, you need fancy harness assemblies. Then you need to plug those harnesses into very, very expensive equipment.

You're not going to find anything for $20k. High-throughput USB-cable testing simply can't be done the same way copper CAT6 certification can with a 20k Fluke.

For those who want to play with Mr Google, some manufacturers from my notes: Wilder Technologies, Allion, Keysight, Tektronix, Teledyne LeCroy

Here's one blog post I uncovered during my researches: https://www.keysight.com/blogs/en/tech/bench/2023/02/17/powe...