The rapidly evolving landscape for data centers and optical networks demands rapid development of new and higher capacity network systems. These new systems must be tested across a variety of operating conditions to meet the real world environments for global customers. Lab testing and development play a crucial role in ensuring the reliability, efficiency, and scalability of these network systems. One key aspect that can significantly impact the success of these endeavors and accelerate the development timeline is the automation of fiber network testing. In this article, we'll explore the benefits of automating fiber networks for lab testing and development and how it can revolutionize the way network systems are designed, tested, and deployed. The article will conclude with a real-world example demonstrating the benefits of automated testing.
What is Fiber Network Automation?
Fiber network automation involves using hardware and software tools to manage and configure fiber optic networks to allow new network gear to be tested across a wide range of operating parameters including different fiber types, transceiver optics, signal modulation formats and traffic patterns. Automation reduces manual intervention and minimizes errors while accelerating and expanding the range of conditions that can be tested. This approach enables network administrators to quickly provision, test, and analyze performance across a wide range of conditions, streamlining the entire process.
Benefits of Automating Fiber Networks and Equipment Parameters for Lab Testing and Development
Increased Efficiency: Automation significantly reduces the time and effort required to set up and test fiber networks and network configurations in lab environments. This enables engineers to focus on higher-value tasks, such as developing new network architectures, testing protocols and analyzing results.
Improved Accuracy: Manual configuration and testing of fiber networks can lead to human errors, which can be costly and time-consuming to rectify. Automation ensures that fiber test networks are configured correctly, reducing the likelihood of errors and ensuring more accurate test results.
Enhanced Scalability: Automated testing can be easily scaled up or down to accommodate changing requirements. This flexibility is particularly valuable in lab environments where testing scenarios and network configurations need to be rapidly adapted or where demanding customers may require additional testing prior to deployment.
Faster Troubleshooting: Automation tools can quickly identify and isolate issues, enabling engineers to rapidly troubleshoot and resolve problems. This reduces downtime and accelerates the testing and development process.
Cost Savings: By reducing manual labor and minimizing errors, automation can lead to significant cost savings. Automated reconfiguration allows expensive test gear to be easily shared across users, avoiding the need to purchase dedicated test sets.
Better Collaboration: Automated testing provides a consistent and reproducible environment, enabling teams to collaborate more effectively and share test results with greater accuracy.
Choosing the Right Equipment for Lab Automation
Since a key element of the testing is to minimize artifacts from the fiber network automation equipment itself and allow precise testing of the network equipment, the best automation systems will have excellent optical performance. Performance features include very low optical loss, minimal crosstalk and low polarization and back-reflection dependance. Additionally, the automation system should be simple and not cause any uncertainty when analyzing the results of the testing. As an example, suppose the automation system uses a fast dither system to monitor and correct alignment of internal mirrors used for steering of the input and output beams in the automation system. Depending on the speed of this dither and the test measurement being made, this dither could add artifacts to the signals under test. Finally, with the increased expense of test equipment, the automation system should have a scale and configuration ability that allows the expensive test gear to be efficiently shared across a number of users.
The Telescent robotic system meets all these requirements. The all-fiber system offers the best possible optical performance since it consists only of a short 3 meter fiber patch with 2 low-loss connectors. The proprietary algorithm allows the robot to select one port and route the fiber around more than 1,000 other fibers to the desired new port, making this the largest optical cross-connect system commercially available today. Additionally, the design of the Telescent system allows for an asymmetric configuration with more output ports than input ports. This RobUSTTM configuration allows expensive test equipment to be shared across a number of users cost effectively.
Real World Example
An example of the benefits of automated testing is network testing using a traffic generator. Automating the reconfiguration process allows for rapid reconfiguration of network topologies, enabling comprehensive testing of various scenarios without the need for manual cable swaps. With the traffic generator producing realistic traffic patterns, the Telescent robotic system can quickly iterate through different network configurations, helping to identify bottlenecks, validate network security policies, and ensure optimal performance under various conditions. Automation also enables round-the-clock testing, increasing test coverage and speeding up the overall testing process.
Simulating large traffic patterns to stress the network under test demands a traffic generator with a significant number of ports. Because a high-end traffic generator can cost several million dollars, being able to share its numerous ports among different users offer significant cost savings.
Conclusion
Automating fiber networks for lab testing and development is a game changer for network system development. By increasing efficiency, improving accuracy and enhancing scalability, automation enables engineers to design, test and deploy network systems more quickly and reliably. As the demand for high-speed, low-latency networks continues to grow, fiber network automation will play an increasingly important role in ensuring the success of network system development. By adopting automation and following best practices, organization can stay ahead of the curve and drive innovation in the field of network systems.