If you’re in charge of managing an Outside Plant (OSP) fiber network, you already know there’s nothing like the threat of backhoes and hurricanes to make you lose sleep. What will get damaged…and what else will be impacted? Are you going to have to send someone out in the field on a wild goose chase?
Managing your OSP infrastructure becomes a lot more doable when you put the right software in place. As the makers of netTerrain OSP software for managing your Fiber Plant (which you can use to manage both Inside and Outside Plant), we first rolled out netTerrain OSP because our customers requested it: they needed a software program for managing not just their cabling infrastructure inside their data centers, telecom rooms, and office space, but also track the outside cabling to see an end to end cable path and a better way to manage their fiber and its strands. After a period of development, netTerrain OSP was born.
Manage OSP Troubleshooting
Something’s gone wrong with your fiber infrastructure…who you gonna call? Not Ghostbusters! Do you rely on outdated documents you printed sometime in the last couple of years? Maybe that will have the answers! Better yet…have a magic 8 ball hanging around the office? You could begin to manually check all the fiber…
With software such as netTerrain OSP, though, there’s a better way to handle OSP problems. You can pinpoint the exact locations of each connection. Find any attribute…in seconds. Easily find circuit paths; attach as many documents to your OSP assets as you’d like (and manage them just as you do in SharePoint).No more sending people out into the field on wild goose chases. Know what you have, where it is, what’s impacted…and fix it.
Manage Fiber Plant and Network Budgets
When you have insights about your OSP network, you can better manage OSP-related expenditures. Need to know how many strands you have, how many strands are being used, how many are not performing a function and can be repurposed? Before you invest money in more IT clutter, netTerrain can help you plan.
Manage your fiber capacity. You can visualize the fill and occupancy rates of elements such as conduits, ducts, and buffers — by assigned fiber strand or other custom criteria. Further, you can pull up occupancy and capacity reports either in a dashboard or as a report.
You can also create circuits by using netTerrain’s drag-and-drop feature and then map each assigned path to the port level. You can assign the strands, reserve strands and ports, and also use netTerrain work orders to manage changes in your fiber plant.
Manage OSP Network Hassles
Now, more than ever before, information is crucial. We do, after all, live in the information age. Software such as netTerrain gives you needed information about your OSP network. What do you rely on for info when your boss announces a new circuit path is needed for an important project, and they need information for tomorrow’s big meeting? How can you find out what fiber you have free and select a path? Random guesswork? Throw a hail mary pass into the field? Work all night (and forget about the BBQ, game, birthday, or Fido waiting by the door for his walk)? OSP documentation gives you clear answers and eliminates the stress and hassle associated with not having the insights you need.
To sum up, with the right software, you don’t have to let backhoes and wind storms keep you up at night. netTerrain OSP, for example, lets you know what you have, where it is, and how to fix it. Stop wasting time and money on antiquated processes.