The invention is a cable identifier apparatus and a method for fast identification of multi-wire or multi fiber cable. The illumination optics can divide an illumination light radiation bundle into a plurality of radiation sub-bundles which are assigned to different illumination angles of the object field illumination. The programmable integer frequency divider divides the frequency of the input signal by a second divisor to generate the output signal, wherein the second divisor is first or second integers depending on a divisor switching signal.