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FEATURE TEST AND MEASUREMENT
Jonathan Borrill, director of marketing at
Anritsu (EMEA), pointed to the difficulties experienced by technicians in the field as they have to cope both with the latest technology recently deployed in the field and also with legacy equipment. Technicians need to be fully equipped at the outset, to avoid them having to return to base for additional equipment that initially they had not expected to use. He said: ‘10Gb Ethernet is the new requirement that we have to support. Going beyond the 10Gb deployments that we are seeing today, the new technology that we are rolling out is the OTN network management and network configuration – the ODU Flex configuration – where you can flexibly reconfigure the network.’ Borrill continued: ‘Te guy out in the field
needs to be able to support all the different technologies. A big challenge for us was to put not only the new technology, but all the legacy into a sensible-sized platform, and not end up with two or three boxes, or some great big thing that was impossible to carry around, or had a short battery life. For a field tester, this concept of all-in-one is really important. What we wanted to do was to support OTN and 10Gb Ethernet. But although these new technologies are rolling out, the old stuff isn’t going away. People are not actively ripping out SDH, PDH networks: they are keeping them going and using them as much as possible.’ Te new functionality included in Anritsu’s
MT1000A Network Master Pro makes this possible, he claimed: ‘Now you can send out one team and make sure that they have the tools to test whatever the fault is and not have to send one team out and say “Oh well this is a problem with the SONET network: come back, get some different tools, and send somebody else?”.’ Robert Luijten, global field marketing
manager at Fluke Networks, continued the theme: ‘Fluke Networks’ test and measurement products help installers and network engineers address the issues arising from a combination of factors.’ Among the factors that Luijten believes are confronting test and measurement contractors today are: the move from 1Gbps copper connections to 10Gbps copper and 40Gbps, or even 100Gbps fibre, which makes each connection much more critical because it carries more data; and more complex installations, arising from increased virtualisation and WiFi. In addition, he too cited how installers and project managers are having to work with reduced resources, and have fewer trained personnel available to do the work. According to Luijten, Fluke Networks’
products address the increased complexity and Issue 5 • Autumn 2014 FIBRE SYSTEMS 25
reduced numbers of skilled staff available by managing the test process as well as the test itself. Tey address every part of the certification process, from planning to system acceptance, and can handle multiplex testing scenarios, he said. Tey also incorporate built-in intelligence and an interface that can walk technicians through testing and project requirements, regardless of their level of training. A key area of innovation, therefore, is to increase the ‘intelligence’ of the test and
This reduction in ‘truck rolls’ or the number of times technicians are sent to fix a potential problem is a key topic
measurement equipment because technicians in the field may not all have a high-level skill set. One way of attaining this is by using some kind of connectivity to match the technician in the field with an expert back at the office, so that one expert could potentially work with multiple technicians. AFL’s Adam pointed to the company’s FOCIS
product range. Te FOCIS WiFi product, he said, turns any Android and IOS smartphone or tablet into an inspection solution and runs a full
standards-based analysis in less than a half- second. ‘Once again, the focus is innovation through smart algorithms and optimisation for speed,’ he concluded. Fujikura Europe is the approved calibration
and repair centre for AFL NOYES products in Europe and is the authorised distributor for AFL NOYES test and measurement products in the UK. Tom Watson, UK regional sales manager of
the company’s fusion splicer division stressed that ‘the volume of fibres to be tested can be a daunting task, and calls for automated event analysis. Te Noyes M310 uses new, powerful techniques of analysing OTDR traces, including automated event tables.’ It was, he continued, ‘specifically designed for the technical challenges presented in today’s networks such as multiple connectors, splices in each fibre, short jumper cables, and splitters.’ Watson concluded: ‘OTDRs commonly have
problems in separating closely spaced events. We have found that non-NOYES OTDR products may classify such events as “hidden”, our M310 OTDR product has the capability of separating and measuring these. For example, using an optical power meter and optical light source to check jumper cables will only provide an insertion loss measurement, and other OTDRs will not be capable of measuring the loss and reflectance at both ends.’ Anritsu recently launched the new Transport
Tester MT1000A Network Master Pro, a device designed to provide an all-in-one package for test and measurement technicians in the field. Borrill
AFL’s M310 Enterprise OTDR
AFL
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