Alcatel-Lucent (News 
- Alert) and its research center, Bell Labs, are praised for various communication technology breakthroughs that have shaped the industry. The company recently developed yet other Bell Labs (News - Alert) innovation in the form of a new network monitoring solution, believed to make network-monitoring less complex and more economic.
According to Alcatel-Lucent, the latest Bell Labs breakthrough is all about providing an easy, fast and affordable method for accurately identifying and pinpointing faults.
Leveraging a technique called Optical Time Domain Reflectometry (OTDR), the new solution plugs into a network’s existing fiber access nodes and integrates with the Motive Network Analyzer, Alcatel-Lucent’s remote management solution for broadband access networks.
This approach will reportedly provide a comprehensive and continuous view of PON networks, used to deliver high-speed broadband services to consumers and businesses.
Network outage is a nightmare for both service providers as well as end users. Embedded with Alcatel-Lucent’s OTDR technology, the new solution will address this issue both during the rollout phase and also once it is in service.
Due to installation faults, network issues can surface later. During the rollout phase the solution provides remote validation to ensure the quality of fiber installation.
During the operations, the solution continuously monitors all lines and pinpoints the location of network problems. This helps reduce the need for field technicians to make multiple visits to a site.
“Technologies such as Alcatel-Lucent’s Embedded OTDR solution are fundamental tools that give service providers a better understanding of what is happening in their fiber access networks,” said Erik M. Keith, principal analyst of Fixed Access Infrastructure at Current Analysis (News - Alert). “Knowing where a problem occurs allows service providers to send technicians to the right place, speed up problem resolution, and provide customers with a better service experience. As such, this solution is a key enabler for protecting service providers’ fiber assets and revenue.”
“We have embedded OTDR test functionality into our Intelligent Services Access Manager (ISAM) to make it a very cost-effective solution. Moreover, by integrating OTDR in our Motive Network Analyzer, where it is combined with a number of complementary technologies, we can provide a comprehensive and end-to-end view of service providers’ fiber networks. By keeping the network fully operational, cash flow is maintained and new services can be introduced smoothly, which is an important benefit for any service provider. This makes for a unique value proposition,” head of Alcatel-Lucent’s Wireline activities Dave Geary noted in a statement.
In other news, Alacatel-Lucent announced that it is introducing an enhancement to its Application Fluent Network solution, providing capabilities to automatically adjust and optimize the entire corporate network to smoothly and effectively support mobile devices and real-time applications in the local area network, the data center and across the wide area network.
Automation is essential to businesses of any size to meet the challenges of delivering virtualized, mission-critical applications securely to employees over a high performance network – no matter where workers are accessing these applications.
Edited by
Braden Becker
