When I was helping on the Google fiber designs (working for Ericsson), the distances were measured by what they called stationing distances. This was usually a distance from a given starting point be in a CO or fiber hut or other logical origination. It was measured in feet and had its own notation/number system. Engineering drawing for the build always show the stationing distance for things like poles, vaults and such. It was linear distance and not cable/fiber distance. This gives you a fixed point anywhere along the plant even when the fiber lengths may change due to cuts and such. Chuck can probably explain the numbering system better. I would then add fields for fiber length and OTDR test measurements in the database records. Ericsson has an outside plant database and GIS system and that was how they set things up. It was very elaborate to the point of managing fibers/circuits, butterfly diagrams for manhole/vault layouts with all the ports and fiber bundles, cross connect and splice points, etc. The backed database was large and had many relationships.
Found some documentation I had when learning about stationing. Stationing is the fundamental system of measurement used for road layout and construction. Stations are reference points that are placed along the horizontal measurement of a route centerline or a baseline at some regular interval. Generally, the distance between two adjoining stations along a route is 100 feet. The first station located at the beginning of the baseline is 0+00, and the next station located 100 feet from it is 1+00. Therefore, a station number of 10+34.05 denotes 1,034.05 feet (10*100 + 34.05) from the starting station. Placement of stations along a centerline Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chuck McCown Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2017 10:21 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Cable documentation No, that whole route is there. All the details are on that sheet. It is a 4 strand cable that is spliced at cherry and apple handhole From: Adam Moffett Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2017 5:52 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Cable documentation It seems like the book starts with the endpoints at the CO....which makes sense because that's where you'll start troubleshooting from. Would there be a separate book for whatever cable is carrying strand 3 from Cherry and Apple to VPres ? ------ Original Message ------ From: "Chuck McCown" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: 4/7/2017 11:16:39 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Cable documentation See if you can open this: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-W9J8tPanuAeU1Lc3BDYWlVSjg Very rudimentary. But you can see that some of the strands on the cable go clear to the end. Other strands are cut at a hand hole and spliced to another cable. The other cable is shown at the far right. The >< symbols show it is spliced to a different cable. You connect the > to the < as you jump over handholes that are not part of the circuit for that strand. The – is a splice. The 0 or dot is the end termination. I used to have lots of color coding etc. I could not find any of the old copper cable books for an example so I hacked this example out. From: Adam Moffett Sent: Friday, April 07, 2017 8:42 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Cable documentation One column per splice.....then you just type in the footage(s). Gee that makes sense. It's as if you've done this before. ------ Original Message ------ From: "Chuck McCown" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: 4/7/2017 10:31:17 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Cable documentation A spreadsheet works pretty well. One line per strand. Have fields at the left for details about the circuit, customer, type of optics etc. Then columns can represent footage to the splice with one column per splice. You can even represent other cables being spliced in and taking off on another route. From: Justin Wilson Sent: Friday, April 07, 2017 4:06 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Cable documentation The line guys would do the following at the local phone company I worked out many many years ago. I am sure there are lots of better ways to do it with modern processes. The cared about a few things. Where can I find the splice points? Where can I find vaults? Where are my slack points on the path and how much is left or do I have? How do I do all this in the middle of the night during the rain? During install it was specified where the slack loops happen. They would care about the overall material used when running cable. If they ran down a road to a vault all they cared about was how much length off the spool was used. This was documented. Once everything was installed the certification notes were included in the construction closeout drawings and put in an appendix at the back of the book. The linemen did not care about such things. I typical do not see fiber being in a twisted pair type of configuration. Not sure what everyone else uses, but all the ones I pull apart are side by side. I think there is even a “how it’s made” on fiber optic cable and it has a machine that makes sure they do not get twisted. Just my .02. Justin Wilson [email protected] --- http://www.mtin.net Owner/CEO xISP Solutions- Consulting – Data Centers - Bandwidth http://www.midwest-ix.com COO/Chairman Internet Exchange - Peering - Distributed Fabric On Apr 7, 2017, at 4:23 PM, Adam Moffett <[email protected]> wrote: I started a spreadsheet to document a fiber line. I figure I'll make a new file for each cable, a worksheet for notes on the cable as a whole, a worksheet for each buffer tube, and a color coded column for each fiber. Each row will be 100'. My thought was, if I have a splice enclosure 4200' down the line, I'll go down to row 42 and enter "Splice enclosure on pole 305". Then I can note on each fiber whether it passes through the enclosure, or note what it splices to, including a reference to another file if necessary. I understand they used to do something similar with 3-ring binders for mapping the pairs on phone lines. The first question I ran into was which distance do I go by: The actual distance the line has traveled The cable length, which will be ~15-20% longer due to slack loops The fiber length, which will be longer still due to the built in twist.....but is easily measurable with an OTDR. All three somehow? Is this even a smart method? Plan B is to use GIS. I can add every pole, cable, and enclosure as objects in their actual location with properties describing the actual distance, cable length, fiber length and anything else I want. That would be technically better, but I'm the only one here who can use the GIS software whereas any boob can type into a spreadsheet. If I use a Google sheet then multiple people can use the same sheets and fill them in from their phone. I'm sure these problems have been solved before, so what do you all do?
