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Then there’s the pride of ownership. Having a or “standards” for ownership after you drive off seem like a stretch, but the same is true of your
new car feels a bit like a life milestone. You’ve the lot. Sure, the dealer puts an owner’s manual fiber network.
been driving a beater since college and a new car for recommended maintenance in the glove box,
is a sign to yourself and the world that you’re a but as an owner, there are not “standards” or laws Your company has invested lots of money to
responsible adult with a job and some means at associated with maintenance. The car is yours now. design, build, test and certify your network. You
your disposal. You have to decide when to wash it, what grade of should be proud that you can run 100G on those
fuel you’ll put in the tank, when to purchase new new servers with optical QSFP switch ports and
When you drive your nice, new shiny car off of tires, change the oil and get a tune-up. After you redundant backbones. But do you really know
the lot for the first time, you expect everything drive that car off the lot, the cars maintenance is what to do if and when something goes wrong?
to function as it should, and the car dealer backs your responsibility. And if a warning light starts Network managers need to spend some time
this up with a guarantee. It was built to factory blinking, there aren’t any laws preventing you from thinking and developing good habits of routine
specifications. Behind the scenes, extreme care simply ignoring them. maintenance so they’re not sorry later. The
and precision went into finely calibrated machines methods you relied on for the old 1G network are
that manufacture each part of the car, and the When someone is breathing in the glorious aroma no longer sufficient. As you push more over your
workers in the factory have been well trained to of new car smell, no one is thinking of future fiber, it is essential that your practices for handling
ensure the quality of production. For all of the ownership and maintenance headaches in the and testing allow you to get the best performance
checks and balances, the laws and warranties that years to come, and there’s nothing that requires you can from your network.
go into new car ownership, there aren’t really laws that they do—until something goes wrong. It may
infrastructure of your network really pays off in the following ways. be occuring. The answer is, everywhere! These days, network connectivity
What this means practically is if contractors and network managers can stick
Back Reflection = -67.5 dB
Total Loss = 0.250 dB to some simple key principles, it can have systemic effects. With that in mind,
Dirty Connection “inspect before you connect” is not a bad place to start when it comes to
3 fostering a culture that will ensure desired, real life outcomes—like clean fiber
end faces!
Fiber Contamination and Its Affect on Signal Performance 1: Charles Duhigg, “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business”, Random
Having a device that can quickly measure length, loss, polarity, and inspect the
fiber end faces is really convenient, especially if a network manager is doing
quick “Moves, Adds, or Changes” in their network. Remember the problem
mentioned earlier about knowing the polarity of your connections? This is
where it really comes in handy to have something that can check this for
you, especially when working with cables that use MPO connectors. Many
technicians installed their trunk cables with MPO connectors when they
Optical Loss Test Sets Give You The Information You Need
were running 1G or 10G, but now they are upgrading to 40G & 100G. The
When Scaling Up Your Network
good news is that they can likely still use those trunk cables with the MPO
An OLTS tool is required for contractors to provide Tier 1 certification. These connections. But the bad news is that it has been so long since the cable
tools measure length, loss, polarity, and endface condition. But having this was installed, it may be in bad shape, and they certainly don’t remember the
information is valuable for network managers too. polarity configurations. Having an OLTS lets them check all of this quickly and
easily so they can make their upgrades and scale up with confidence. And if
An Optical Loss Test Set (aka: OLTS) is referred to as a “set” because there are 2
you’re looking for even more visibility into what might be going on with your
units (one at each end of the link). It consists of both an “Optical Light Source”
fiber, you’ll want to use an OTDR.
9 New Car Smell and the Art of Fiber Network Maintenance
This Is Not Your Father’s OTDR The Best Test Tools Drive The Best Practices
Having an OLTS tool is imperative. Where the OLTS can tell if you are within At the end of the day, there are two things to keep in mind when it comes to
your loss budget or not, it cannot tell you where the problem is coming from. fiber testing. One is, good habits matter. And two, it pays off in the long run
Fortunately, an OTDR can. to invest in the right tools so you can get the job right, and avoid wasting
time and resources with the wrong or inadequate set of tools.
I just recently I spoke with several IT techs that hadn’t seen an OTDR in years.
They were still under the impression that OTDRs were large, the reports were First, recall again the story above that referenced Alcoa’s new CEO and his
confusing to read, and they were too expensive. Things are totally different insistence on improving companywide safety. It’s an analogy that keeps on
now as there are many versatile, easy to use tools out there and the reports giving. Again, it’s not the purpose of this article, but if folks working within
are much simpler to read now. In the past, reading a report on the events in a the field can come up with tightly focused goals for each job, and practices
run of fiber detected by an OTDR required what seemed like the equivalent related to keeping fiber clean at all times, the more reliable a network will
of knowing Egyptian hieroglyphics. Not so anymore. Fortunately, much work be. This can start with improving overall technician performance. This could
has gone into OTDR interface design and the visual displays are easy to read include:
where events in the fiber are detected. Also, cloud technology allows reports
to be stored in real time. These capabilities mean that techs can trouble shoot Efficiency: Doing more in less time
in real time and get results to their managers and customers in minutes. You
can read more about these new OTDR capabilities in our article about the Reliability: Ensure techs always follow correct procedures
Advances in Tier 2 Enterprise & Data Center Testing.
Repeatability: Create easy, repeatable processes
In addition, as the need for network speeds
increases, it also increases the need for more in- To ensure that you build good habits in terms of networks health, it’s
depth testing. In Tier 1 testing, you can test for imperative that new techs follow best practices from the first day of their
length, dB loss and polarity, Tier 2 takes it to the training. Let’s face it: once we become familiar with the basics of a given
next level. While some think Tier 2 may be overkill, subject, it’s easy to cut corners. Remember how scared you were when you
it’s becoming more and more common. Tier 2 first learned to drive? By the time you put a few hundred miles in, you were
testing gives visibility into exactly where within a probably only coming to a “California stop” at certain stop signs in parts of
fiber run a problem is surfacing and helps identify town with slower traffic. The same is true with any new skill we learn. Put
New OTDR
issues like optical return loss, the amount of dB loss interfaces are easy to
and reflectance. To learn more about why more understand
Second, think about a time when you were frustrated about not having
the right tool for the job. Have you ever been in your garage trying to fix
something simple with the wrong tool? It’s frustrating, isn’t it? Here’s an
example from my own life. I have to admit in the past I’ve been a late adopter
when it comes to personal technology. I held off getting a smart phone for
years. People kept telling me how much easier my life would be with a smart
phone, but I was set in my ways. One afternoon I was about ready to throw
my old mobile flip-phone across the room because something wasn’t working.
My boss saw my frustration and told me to drive to the store and just go buy
a smart phone. So, I did it. When I got home, I opened the box and started
to set it up. After 10 minutes, I looked at my wife and said “why did I wait so
long to get this? It can do so many great things that will make life easier.” And
the same is true for fiber testing.
viavisolutions.com