Best Practices for Outside Plant

Best Practices for Tracking, Consolidating, and Managing Outside Plant IT Infrastructure

Is it easy for you to:

  • find the pathways of all the cables that run throughout your campus?
  • determine which circuits traverse those cables, and what services would be affected by a cable cut or a change in routing?
  • decipher which fibers are lit or dark in a particular duct, and if there’s room for expansion?

This document offers guidelines for the methodologies that can help you properly administer and manage your outside plant infrastructure, from the physical cable runs, to the connectivity and the terminating assets. It takes you step-by-step through defining stakeholders, establishing goals, gathering data, and putting a process in place to establish and maintain best practices via any Configuration Management System. It’s a follow-up to our Inside Plant Best Practices guide, which is also available for download.

img3Accidental cable cuts from maintenance and expansion activities can cause major damage and service interruptions

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With stacks piled high, the necessary drawings for the affected cables can be difficult to identify and review.

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