When we first saw this news story back in April of this year, we said, “we have to write a blog about this.” What’s it about? Well, you probably “wood”n’t believe it, but: beavers caused some massive headaches in a Canadian town. Yes: beavers.
If you’re new to working on the outside plant, that may surprise you. If you’re seasoned, though, probably nothing phases you at this point.
What happened?
In a nutshell: hundreds of folks lost internet in the town of Tumbler Ridge because some beavers gnawed through a cable that was buried three feet underground and protected in a 4 and a half inch conduit. Now that’s a “dam” problem!
A spokesperson for the company described the beaver-related outage as a “uniquely Canadian problem”. That sounds about right, as, afterall, the beaver is Canada’s national animal.
Though beavers chewing through buried and protected cable may be a uniquely Canadian problem, unexpected outside plant issues are to be expected. Afterall — the outside plant means that, by its very nature, it’s outside and subject to outside elements. In other words, beavers and backhoes happen when IT elements are outside.
All joking aside about beavers chewing a fiber cable, if you’re managing your fiber splices in spreadsheets, trying to locate an outage or break that seemingly takes forever, an OSP software solution can help increase your team’s efficiency and ultimately, save you time and money.
Rather than be at the mercy of random outside elements taking down outside plant elements without accurate information about where everything is and what’s there, outside plant software like netTerrain can help you to:
- Identify fiber locations
- Understand what equipment you’ll need to fix issues without trudging out to the field
OSP software like netTerrain helps you identify and locate all of your fiber locations in a central repository, so your staff and contractors can view the same maps and data in one place. From viewing GIS maps down to the street level, place manholes with lat/long coordinates, and view and track all of your splices (which Google Earth has a limitation on, according to various organizations I’ve talked to about this).
OSP Software gives you the ability to create a ‘Bill of Materials’ report that you can hand over to your contractors to start building out circuits. You can view a complete circuit path to view the entire span of the circuit from the LIU, to manholes, through multiple fiber connections, this will help users to identify how a circuit is laid out to help reduce troubleshooting time and manage capacity.
With OSP software, you can also help manage fiber capacity and determine if there are available paths to take between two buildings, for example. netTerrain OSP, for example, has a feature that automatically finds vacant fibers. Automated Circuit Routing Algorithm (ACRA) is an algorithm that netTerrain uses to determine optimal routes between two points on a map. This feature allows you to create a new circuit in netTerrain, and what path it should take.
Determining a new path between two points is easy with ACRA
You can speed up troubleshooting and deployment. You can reduce downtime by quickly identifying end-to-end connections. Pinpoint exact locations of each connection segment and element. Find any attributes you like in seconds by searching in one central repository. Create circuits with simple drag and drops and map each assigned path down to the port level.
Ready to learn more about netTerrain OSP? If you are, or if you want a free trial (no strings attached), click here to get started.