Best Practices for Simulating a Physical Fiber Optic Network

Prior to deploying new equipment into a live fiber optic network, communications equipment manufacturers, service providers, and carriers must ensure that their systems will work exact as intended.  As a result, these organizations strive to exactly simulate the live network in a laboratory environment.  While the consensus in the industry agrees that using real optical fiber will yield the most accurate measurements, traditional methods of using unsecured bare optical fiber spools can often lead to experiencing inefficiencies and marginal results.  

 

As the demand for more bandwidth grows and the march towards 100G systems continues, laboratories must address this crucial aspect of their testing process, or risk falling behind.  This is most certainly the case with that large laboratories that are performing 24/7 testing on multiple networks at a time, or seeking to consolidate operations and require frequent changes to the test setups.

 

Fortunately, there are several best practices that test engineers can follow to help maximize both efficiency and results when seeking to simulate a fiber optic network.  After reading this brief whitepaper, readers will have a better understanding of how taking just a few simple steps can significantly and positively impact their efforts in this area.