The term "fiber network" often conjures images of commercials, fiber optics, or some other multi-billion dollar media and telecommunications company that promotes their reliance on fiber-optic infrastructure for their business.
But what about local municipalities? Or a regional utility? With the fiber optic market expected to grow to billions by 2022, fiber optic networks are not just for these big companies but also for most communication networks today. You might be an IT director or fibre manager at a small regional telecommunications company, a company in the financial industry, a utility or local government that makes extensive use of fibre networks and is responsible for ensuring the network operates as intended.
Some animals may bite fiber optics or be torn by humans
Ensuring network integrity and performance means larger companies need the same level of monitoring of their fiber optic networks, but perhaps on a smaller scale to suit your own needs. Fiber optic networks can fall prey to some interesting "environmental" factors. We've heard stories of network drops, and one of them is an interesting one due to squirrels chewing off the line, bad drivers knocking down poles or lines getting damaged during hunting season. These unforeseen events can wreak havoc on the network and, if not properly diagnosed right away, can result in significant downtime and wasted resources on finding and fixing problems.
In addition to this, many smaller organizations rely on contract services to perform their maintenance work. These services can be expensive and are usually billed by the hour. So just knowing and communicating where to send the maintenance team in the first place can save a lot of money.
Optical fiber monitoring system from Jiafu Optical Communication
To help businesses monitor their network for any unforeseen issues, Croft offers a fiber network monitoring solution designed to help network operations teams:
(1) Quickly identify and locate physical fiber problems to reduce downtime
(2) Reduce truck costs and technician working hours
(3) Actively monitor the network to prevent tampering or other malicious behavior
(4) Minimize the need for manual link verification testing
How does it work? Quite simply, a fiber monitoring system acts as a continuously operating OTDR that resides in the network and actively monitors the physical fiber infrastructure for outages, tampering, etc. When a problem occurs that exceeds an acceptable threshold set by the user, the system sends real-time alerts with the location of the problem. This allows service teams to resolve issues quickly and ensure the integrity and performance of their critical network links.
To maximize value to users, the device is designed in an efficient way to save rack space and scale efficiently. Depending on the setup, the system consists of three or fewer components, so it can be easily integrated into any network environment. Also, once the monitoring network is set up, the limited amount of hardware will result in very little maintenance (if any).
