They say that it is tough being married to a runner and I think my wife would agree with that. A runner’s spouse always has to hear about various aches and pains, and about how we are looking forward to this race. We also like to talk about our new running shoes or some new personal best time; I am sure it gets old. With that being said, let’s talk about running.
If you think about it, building a FTTx network is a lot like running a marathon: You have many miles to cover to be able to achieve your goal. Recently, the finish line for a FTTx network has been moved a little further. With the growing popularity of indoor ONT’s, you are going to have to extend your fiber network further. Instead of terminating fiber on the outside of the home, you will need to bring that fiber inside a customer dwelling. As if building a FTTH network wasn’t hard enough, now you have to deal with all the challenges associated with bringing fiber into the home. It’s like running 26.4 miles instead of 26.2!
Something that all runners try to do is “finish strong” — we want to make sure that we are not walking across the finish line, and are instead running flat out at the end. I think we can carry this philosophy into building FTTx networks. We should make that extra distance from the outside of the home to the indoor ONT as robust and strong as possible. Don’t make the weakest link near the finish line.
A couple of things to think about so that you too can “finish strong”:
- Think about placing a microduct in the home for a repairable pathway to the ONT
- Use FiberDeep .2 dB IL patch cords to reduce the amount of optical loss in the network
- Place a Test Access Point (TAP) Box on the outside of the home to provide a testing point outside of the home
- Perhaps use a bend insensitive cable to reduce the chance of customer damage
By Tom Warren