Vague title, because im not a network engineer, im a physical engineer,and im trying to make sure I dont make a fool of myself suggesting something impossible of our NOC team.
I am trying to come up with a bit of a hack process for my network engineering team to use mikrotik to monitor a whole bunch of different PON fibers that all end up at the same place, a mass dwelling unit / mass residential development..
Before you ask me why on earth I would want to do that, just tell me if the following is possible; yes or no, then read on if you want to understand why someone woudl want to do such a thing.
Products exist for this yes, but they are not MIKROTIK so were not interested hehe.
https://www.quantifiphotonics.com/produ ... wer-meter/
Can I stick a mikrotik SFP switch, at the end of a PON network behidn the splitters, just sitting there transmitting nothing, doing nothing except listening/receiving the downlink 1490nm on all fibers just to create an alert if any one of the fibers goes dark?
Effectivley, im trying to use a mikrtick SFP switch with a Duplex SFP, and just use the RX port of that to listen and give stats on the RX power. If theres a fiber break, the power will just die, so I wonder if somehow that could be monitored by a script or something and trigger warnings just like those that warn our NOC when an active ethernet port goes down (unreachabel) . Only difference is here we want it not to look at network, but to jsut monitor the RX power and thats all. It'd be a good use of our old dirty worn out stock of CRS106s or CRS212s.
I would use something like these as the receivers, with sensitivity all the way down to -34dbm, cheap, stupid, dumb, slow 100mbps, perfect for monitoring purposes.
https://www.fs.com/sg/products/64229.html
Even though its the wrong wavelength, it will still read power from 1490 just fine, with accuracy good enough to know if a fiber has broken, like have the power meter set on the wrong wavelength.
Sooo now for , why on earth would someone want to do this?
Developing country, lots of telcos, intense demand for fiber break response, need for neutral hosting, tiny space available.
I'm hosting splitters for an open access network in mass residential developments, allowing lots of retail service providers to connect to tenants.
I want to provide instantaneous response time to any fault wiithin the main interconnecting cables between buildings in the site, and the only way to do this perfectly is to listen to everyones fiber from the very end, behind the splitter in the basement meet me room. I dont want to buy crazy monitoring products, this is supposed to be a simple passive installation.
These PONs are not my own networks, I'm just a dark fiber provider, so I cant see what happens to the end users/tenants, and I dont want to wait for the RSP to tell me they think the fiber break is our site and our fault. I want a best effort within reasonable cost, to keep an eye on it so that in the event a fiber goes down, were already there testing it before they even show up. if its broken outside of our site, we help them by telling them that.
Its not significant enough revenue to warrant a rack mounted OTDR this is the sweet spot, if it is possible.
Thanks for your input or suggestions or your laughing at me!