Downtime for Maintenance - a Thing of the Past?

Operators of optical networks know that performing maintenance on fibers or spans take a lot of coordination and planning.  Traffic must be rerouted to alternate network paths.  Customers need to be informed of possible network outages.  Disabling links must be managed through a variety of networking equipment - transponders, ROADMs, OTN terminals, SONET ADMs, etc.  Additionally, care must be taken to ensure that maintenance personnel are not exposed to eye damaging laser energy.

Well planned and executed network maintenance works - customers and network traffic are uneffected - but, the process is time consuming and expensive in terms of man hours and network resource utilization.  If however, there is even the slightest error in planning or execution, the result can be significant impact to network availability and performance and an even greater drain on expensive human and network resources. 

What if there was an easier way to do maintenance?  One that didn't require:

• Taking  complete routes out of service
• Hours of planning and coordination
• Engaging transmission equipment like transponders, ROADMs, OTN terminals, SONET ADMS
• Re-routing traffic
• Notifying customers
• Exposing maintenance personnel to the risk of exposure to eye damaging lasers.

Would downtime (and the added expense) for maintenance become a thing of the past?  We think there is a better, easier way to perform maintenance using compact, Polatis 1000 optical switches.  Want to find out more?  Check out our next blog - or contact us at:

• 978-327-5080  telephone
• info@polatis.com email
• http://www.polatis.com/