Shortcomings of Today’s Fiber Infrastructure
In short, the patch cord management of the fiber infrastructure is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and prone to human error, all of which drives up the total cost of the fiber network infrastructure.
The most expensive and critical asset of the network operator is the physical fiber infrastructure. The network operator expects this infrastructure to be flexible, reliable, and fault tolerant. However, management of the fiber infrastructure is time-consuming and complex today, requiring hands-on technician intervention for most operations, via manual fiber connectivity products such as distribution frames, patch panels, and patch cords. Moreover, this complexity has increased over time, as network operators have expanded their networks – always requiring more patch panels and patch cords – resulting in the “spaghetti effect” in large network facilities. The labor intensive operations required to deploy, provision, and service the ever-growing, manually-connected fiber network severely complicates network operations and drives up costs.
Network outages, configuration changes, and maintenance activities require that technicians be dispatched, often to multiple locations, to perform manual operations on the network. Each operation may require the disconnection and re-connection of multiple fibers, each of which must be properly identified to avoid live service disruption. Manual connect-disconnect operations frequently result in broken or dirty connectors, signal degradation, and network downtime, leading to service-level agreement (SLA) penalties and customer dissatisfaction. Manual connect-disconnect operations are considered so risky that network operators prefer to leave unused connections in place, thereby “stranding” valuable assets.
In short, the manual management of the fiber infrastructure is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and prone to human error, driving up the costs and reducing the efficiency of the fiber network infrastructure.
 The Benefits of Automatic Fiber Management
FiberZone Automated Fiber Management (AFM) streamlines management of the fiber infrastructure, placing its management and control in the hands of the network operator. AFM enables both the efficient design and operation of the network, and the delivery of new services such as “Connection-on-Demand”,
Following the one-time connection of incoming and outgoing fibers to the AFM system, all manual operations are eliminated. Instead of manually connecting patch cords to create connection paths or perform test and maintenance, administrators issue commands to perform the operations remotely. .
AFM also automates the error-prone task of manually updating the fiber inventory database. The AFM system ensures consistency between the fiber topology map and the port-level optical paths, by simultaneously making physical fiber connections and updating the inventory database.
AFM delivers very rapid return on investment (ROI), offering network operators immediate operational and capital cost savings, and new revenue opportunities:
• Reduced provisioning time
• Savings in expensive network facility space
• Increased equipment utilization
• Improved network uptime
• Reduced troubleshooting time
• Faster service restoration
• Reduced SLA penalties
• On-demand connection provisioning
• Managed end-to-end physical connectivity
Please click on the following links for specific AFM solutions:
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