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rebuilder86
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Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Wed Oct 26, 2022 4:09 pm

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!
 
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smyers119
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Wed Oct 26, 2022 10:42 pm

I want to provide instantaneous response time to any fault wiithin the main interconnecting cables between buildings in the site...,
Do you control the devices between the buiildings? If so you can set up snmp monitoring between all the devices and achieve the same result. I personally do not think your idea as currently conceptualized would work. But I wouldn't discount the fact that someone somewhere may know enough to tweak your idea into a workable one. So the wrong idea is a better base then no idea.


Good luck.
 
rebuilder86
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Thu Oct 27, 2022 6:50 am

there are actually no devices under our control, its all dark fiber. the effort we put in, is installing the fiber from the street to the center of the land development (MMR) then from there to each building and up the risers to each apartment/unit faceplate
if somoen wants to host active equipment locally, like an OLT in the MMR, we allow that and provide the fiber from the street to that, and then from there to our hosted splitters on to the tenants.

SO theres actually nothing for us to monitor, thats what i intend to create here, an active device which simulates somethign half way between a power meter and a customer service form each telco.

I wonder what exactly wouldnt work, the ability to sense a differnet wavelength of light, or teh ability to SNMP the RX level form the mikrotik switch?

Thanks for the input :)
 
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smyers119
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Thu Oct 27, 2022 9:06 am

What if you used this or this or this. It's made to receive the correct wavelengths.
 
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jvanhambelgium
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Thu Oct 27, 2022 9:37 am

Even if you insert this close to the splitter, whenever your "light drops" that doesn't mean there is fibercable-cut anyway!
There is also the equipment from the Telco in the GPON-chain that uses your deployed DARK FIBER and lights it up!

Suppose the Telco (using your deployed cables) has issues and looses 1 of its optics, are you going to rush onsite because you picked up this drop of light/signal and thinks it a broken cable? Doesn't make sense.
Telco will perform checks and perform OTRD from their equipment and if they think its a cut they will contact you for repairs?

The only way would be OTDR and compare this with the data you have made when you delivered this piece of dark fiber. You probably deliver a nice report with info on lenght,dBm-headroom etc,etc
 
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Thu Oct 27, 2022 2:05 pm

What if you used this or this or this. It's made to receive the correct wavelengths.
See i dont wanna use Bidi, because then im transmitting somethign ito their fiber.
and as for ONU module, i didnt even consider it because i imagined it woud be prohibitively expensive.
I can buy a power meter here for about 5 usd, lol, i jsut want lilke, 30 of them in a rack mount frame all connected to an alerting system really.
 
rebuilder86
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Thu Oct 27, 2022 2:08 pm

Even if you insert this close to the splitter, whenever your "light drops" that doesn't mean there is fibercable-cut anyway!
There is also the equipment from the Telco in the GPON-chain that uses your deployed DARK FIBER and lights it up!

Suppose the Telco (using your deployed cables) has issues and looses 1 of its optics, are you going to rush onsite because you picked up this drop of light/signal and thinks it a broken cable? Doesn't make sense.
Telco will perform checks and perform OTRD from their equipment and if they think its a cut they will contact you for repairs?

The only way would be OTDR and compare this with the data you have made when you delivered this piece of dark fiber. You probably deliver a nice report with info on lenght,dBm-headroom etc,etc
Ahh i see what your saying, they might loose the CATV on 1550 but maintainnt the 1490.
Well thats fine, i want this thing to tell me if all light goes completely dark, or at least, below something like -27, which would be beyond most ONUS rx threshold ?? no??
IM not trying to monitor the quality, im jsut trying to capture complete fiber breaks.
 
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Thu Oct 27, 2022 2:09 pm

can i get an answer on this question then. can SNMP look at rx power of an SFP and tell me when it = less than -27 and do something to tell me that?
 
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jvanhambelgium
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Thu Oct 27, 2022 2:19 pm

SNMP will not do that for you. Sure it can report if actual interface are going down or up
This required some "high intelligence" like a script to evaluate some aspects like Tx/Rx power.
In theory, on Mikrotik, you could have a script running that evaluates the stats on an SFP-interface. (Rx/Tx power) and performs an action based on that.
 
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Thu Oct 27, 2022 3:56 pm

if you are selling dark fiber maybe you shouldn't be using it for anything else nor connecting anything in that strands you are selling

usually some spare strands of fiber are used exclusively for monitoring by tenanant (you) for monitoring
 
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Fri Oct 28, 2022 6:00 pm

yeh chechito, im not transmitting on it, im listening only, with a receiver, its like having a power meter on it full time, in order to make sure we know immediately if something breaks.
By using a duplex transceiver , it only transmits on one fiber and listens on the other, so I fill the transmit port with glue or something, so no one can accidently plug it in to the RSP's fiber, and there you have a cheap permenant monitored power meter. See I think the end user (tenant) would appreciate us not being dicks, actually caring about their internet experience , an dimproving the countries quality of service , as the primary goal of the product rather than the satisfatction of the RSP for not having someone listen to their GPON, which is impossible anyway.

But anyway it looks like I cant do that easily becasue SNMP doesnt really do this, so thanks for that info jvan!
 
rebuilder86
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Fri Oct 28, 2022 6:01 pm

if you are selling dark fiber maybe you shouldn't be using it for anything else nor connecting anything in that strands you are selling

usually some spare strands of fiber are used exclusively for monitoring by tenanant (you) for monitoring
its not in a strand, its basically installing a customer service after the splitter, that we would be doing anyway for them, but instead of it doing anything, its just a power meter, and its there all the time, to help them.
 
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Fri Oct 28, 2022 6:05 pm

then just put an ONU
 
rebuilder86
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Sat Oct 29, 2022 4:13 am

then just put an ONU
hehe , i considered it, but ill need about abou 60 of them. see where im going? what i need is a 60 onPON port ONU, just for power metering hahha. its getting ridiculous isnt it.
 
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jvanhambelgium
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Sat Oct 29, 2022 10:37 am

Hmm, for sure your use-case is pretty ... "a-typical" and I don't think you can ever really monetize it properly. Because you would need to have on each location also Internet connectivity yourself for getting these alarms out. 4G/5G/LTE will be challenging in basements etc.

I you want to get into this arena perhaps you should start offering end-user Internet services yourself on top of the cabling you provide. Then you control more aspects and have more visibility end2end.
 
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Tue Nov 01, 2022 4:11 am

no no we wont be paying the government the franchise costs to sell internet to the greater populus. :)
We have enterprise B2B product and fiber eveyrwhere, and will not become involved in residential service because that would be a conflict of interest with the carrier neutral concept.
These players wouldnt want anything to do with us if we were a competitor.
We can and do have our own fiber in to monitor this thing, through a differnet cable entrance facility which is the entire reason im asking :)


I just want to be able to do similar kinds of fiber monitoring that $$$ comapnies like EXFO offer ( rack mounted OTDR) without the insane CAPEX and without ever injecting any ligh into their fiber, just listening to help identify when its broken so we dont wait for them to ring us and say "HEY WE THIKN YOUR OAN IS BROKEN".
That would be a terrible waste of everyones time, (operators and the general public) im just trying to do the local thing, solve issues with brains and minimal expense.

Basicaly the mikrotik would notice a death of rx power on one of its SFPs, and somehow alert me,
Then id get up out of bed, get on the motor and head roudn there, plug the OTDR in to the dead port on 1650m out of band and make sure its not our fault.
If it was id then call out technicans out to replace the entire underground cable.
The likelihood of this happening is so small that investing in a stuid rack mounted OTDR is out of the question, but I cant do nothing.
perhaps id have to subscribe to each service, get an ONU on each one, in the MMR hosted in their racks next to their the demarcation ODU, plugged in to my mikrotik, pinging the internet.
 
rebuilder86
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Tue Nov 01, 2022 4:27 am

So, on my own personal RB3011
in winbox i see this in the SFP interface.

MODLUE PRESENT (TICK)
RX LOSE
TX Fault

Followed by all the SFP info.
This is for a BIDI module i have installed

Surely if that was a duplex transceiver, surely there iwould be some way to have those first 3 checkboxes alert someone to the RX LOSE?
 
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jvanhambelgium
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Tue Nov 01, 2022 12:02 pm

So, on my own personal RB3011
in winbox i see this in the SFP interface.

MODLUE PRESENT (TICK)
RX LOSE
TX Fault

Followed by all the SFP info.
This is for a BIDI module i have installed

Surely if that was a duplex transceiver, surely there iwould be some way to have those first 3 checkboxes alert someone to the RX LOSE?
Well, SNMP-wise, IF the implementation is done bugfree (to be tested) you can read various parameters out according to MIKROTIK-MIB
I don't think the MT will send out an SNMP "trap" if Rx/Tx falls under certain threshold. Probably it WILL if the whole interface goes "down"
You really need to experiment with that to see if you get these results.
Screenshot from 2022-11-01 10-58-46.png

Alternatively, there are probably small scripts that you can run for lets say every 30seconds that simply look at the Tx/Rx power values. If the value is out-of-range the Mikrotik could alarm you via logmessages, mail, etc,etc But again that means you need Internet connectivity (out-of-band) on every location you service.
This script would be a very simple one.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
 
rebuilder86
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Re: Can a Tik be used to monitor SFP RX power and create alerts when rx pwr dies?

Thu Nov 03, 2022 8:17 am

i see, that makes sense, now I wont be going to them with not a clue about how it wokrs!
Thanks so much

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