There are two different approaches to deploying the fiber monitoring hardware that is effectively in line with the “get your gear off of my fiber” argument. If the monitoring service is intended for a specific customer, the signal will traverse a customer-specific pair. This is pretty rare though, for a wide variety of reasons that have been mostly mentioned here. 

The way this generally works then is that the provider reserves a strand or pair on the cable for monitoring purposes and uses the characterization data to make assumptions about the whole cable. This is pretty effective for “track down the precise location of a cut” or “why did this span just go from -18 to -30 for no apparent reason” and not necessarily the full gamut of characterization issues that can come up on other pairs of glass, which is still enough to meaningfully impact the part of MTTR that is under a provider’s control. For many of you consuming a dark fiber service today, this is the approach being used, so there’s no provider hardware touching your glass and certainly no lambda for your gear to contend with avoiding. 

Dave Cohen
craetdave@gmail.com

On Jun 8, 2020, at 10:55 PM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:


United Cable Company is primarily a broker. 

To Rod's questions :

Sure, you can light a pair and monitor it many different ways. However, as James has said already, most people who want dark fiber are going to want one pair of glass from A to Z with nothing in the middle at all that they don't know about. For me, I would want to know exactly what you had in place ( full specifications , not hand waved 'monitoring device' ) , what wavelengths it used, how it functioned (fully passive, etc), along with some extensive tests to make sure I could do what I expected to without any interference or surprises, before I would come near a contract with you. From my point of view, any device on the glass I am leasing is essentially now part of my network, so I need to know everything about it. Others may have different standards of course, but that's perfectly fine. 

I would say personally though that if during due diligence, your NOC was nothing more than an answering service to someone else, which it kinda sounds like you want, I would personally not do business with that. Again others may have different standards, and that's ok. 



On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 7:54 PM Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:

Rod Beck rod.beck at unitedcablecompany.com wrote

I would calm down, Miles. 😃 Dark fiber networks are built and usually maintained by the same construction company that installed them. And a dark fiber network does not even need a single full time optical engineer. If the cable is damaged, then the guys who installed it will repair it. All the expertise is there.

And no, I am not an executive at a undersea cable system. i was one of Hibernia Atlantic's top salesmen during the early years from 2004-2011 after which I retired.

Funny thing then, given that you signed your original query as:

Roderick Beck
VP of Business Development
United Cable Company
www.unitedcablecompany.com<http://www.unitedcablecompany.com>

And following the link to United Cable Company's web site reveals:

"Your source for the world's most distinctive submarine cable assets."  And the about page says "Its mission, as a leading telecom consulting company, is to represent the world’s most distinctive submarine and terrestrial cable assets."

Your original query asked:

Am I wrong in believing that there should be a way of lighting a single pair in the cable and then monitoring it for signal disruption? It is not a perfect solution, but arguably better than learning that the cable has been damaged from an irate customer.

In a followup message you say:

Just to clarify, this is a dark fiber network already built and will be repaired by the construction company that built it. I just a system to inform them as soon as the fibers are damaged.

So... color me confused about who you are, who you represent, what you're trying to accomplish, what you're asking, and, perhaps, why you don't already know the answer to your question, or have someone internal to your organization who already knows.

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. 
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why. 
In our lab, theory and practice are combined: 
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown