Abstract: Reference standard is vital for test capability evaluation of wire rope nondestructive testing (NDT) instrument, and its configuration has an impact on the decision of evaluation. Based on two important evaluation reports, the report conducted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the report conducted by the Safety in Mines Research Advisory Committee(SIMRAC), and an important standard the ASTM E1571, a comparison on wire rope reference standard is carried out. Three key questions are analyzed, the first one is configuration of reference standard, the second one is how to make flaws, and the last one is how to express the sets of flaw. At the end of this paper, a discussion on the main subject of research on wire rope reference standard is presented. According to the discussion, the main subjects are description of reference standard, space of reference standard, configuration of standard reference and manufacture of reference standard.