On 1/2/10 2:58 AM, "Mikael Abrahamsson" <swmike@swm.pp.se> wrote:
On Fri, 1 Jan 2010, Justin M. Streiner wrote:
The first thing you need to do is test the fiber with an OTDR. If you don't have one, you can probably contract a local cabling company to test it for you.
Why would you want an OTDR report on the fiber, when an attenuation report is probably more accurate? OTDR is good for locating WHERE a problem is, but if you're seeing .2 dB/km attenuation end-to-end, there is little reason to break out the OTDR.
If I was of the opinion that the telco in the original message would act upon output data to clean up fibers/jumpers/splices, then the OTDR is the way to go because you can show them exactly where the issues are in the entire length of fiber. If the telco isn't going to make any modifications then an optical power meter would probably be sufficient. Either you can hit the distance in your loss budget or not. Mike