Fiber and Copper Test and Certification

Laying the Groundwork for Success in Enterprise Copper and Fiber Optics Testing and Certification

Increased capacity demand, caused by the exploding delivery of virtualized services in cloud networks and data centers, has required many enterprise network owners to upgrade copper and fiber cabling infrastructure.

Next-Gen Copper and Fiber Optic Testing Tools for Today’s Enterprise Networks

Copper and fiber deployment continues to grow in datacenters and enterprise networks as the move from gigabit Ethernet to 10G, to 40G, and now 100G is leading to evolving industry standards and less margin for error. Whether transitioning to higher categories of copper, copper to fiber, or simplex to ribbon fiber architectures, maintaining best practices during cabling installation and testing is critical to ensuring future network performance. Technicians are challenged to keep up with these changes by learning the newest cable test methods, supporting industry standards, and operating next-generation cable and fiber optic cable testing tools.

Copper and Fiber Test and Certification Solutions

VIAVI’s comprehensive portfolio of test and certification solutions addresses the needs of today’s enterprise technicians for both copper and fiber networks.

Copper cabling is dominant in the enterprise and connects the vast majority of devices to the network. Technicians need to quickly and accurately certify copper networks but are finding that legacy copper cable testing tools are insufficient for modern enterprise networks. VIAVI’s copper test solutions equip technicians with all the capabilities they need to certify today’s complex copper networks.

Contaminated connectors are the #1 cause for troubleshooting fiber optic networks. While standards bodies have established acceptance criteria for the quality and cleanliness of fiber connector end faces, technicians still face challenges with implementing these practices. Without the right fiber testing tools, maintaining these standards or specifications is difficult and time consuming.

VIAVI’s essential fiber testing tools lead the industry in helping technicians ensure best practices for handling fiber in every situation, from certifying new fiber installations to troubleshooting active fiber networks. Through technology innovation and extensive experience in fiber testing, our solutions equip technicians and network managers to ensure the performance of their fiber optic network with fast and intuitive fiber test solutions that are essential for every technician.

For any new deployment of fiber optic cabling in an Enterprise or Datacenter, testing and certification of the fiber installation is a required deliverable of the technicians. With the rapid growth of data rates in recent years, the baseline requirements known as Tier 1 (Basic) fiber optic certification have changed. As the industry leader in fiber optic test equipment, our optical loss test sets provide Tier 1 (Basic) certification while also incorporating essential capabilities like fiber inspection, as recommended in standards such as TIA 568.3 and ISO 11801.

Demand for more bandwidth and faster network speeds has increased the need for better network visibility. At the fiber infrastructure level, more fiber testing may be needed beyond the basic fiber end-face inspection certification and Tier 1 testing.

While Tier 1 fiber optic tests can identify problems in terms of pass or fail, they cannot determine the root cause or location of the problem. Tier 2 fiber optic testing is used to pinpoint root-cause locations and the amount of loss and optical return loss (ORL) from each problem contributor. The OTDR is used to perform Tier 2 fiber optic testing.

In today’s digital marketplace, Enterprises need high-performance WANs to keep their business running smoothly. In some situations, the right WAN performance monitoring tools can be the difference between disaster and happy customers, both internal and external.

VIAVI’s WAN connectivity and testing solutions are engineered to enable users to test WAN and Internet connections to verify their SLAs and ensure they’re getting what they’re paying for from their network service providers. These solutions facilitate the end-to-end performance testing of a link connecting a branch office to headquarters, for example. A technician can quickly check basic WAN connectivity, as well as more in-depth tests to validate key performance indicators like latency, packet loss, and jitter, without having to trust the information provided by the service provider.

Whether a project is big or small, it is essential for each member of the team to understand which tests need to be performed, by whom, when, and where. VIAVI provides a comprehensive cloud-based workflow management solution for teams who design, build, test and certify fiber and copper in enterprise networks. Empowering every team member with the information needed to complete tasks accurately and on time.

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