Good afternoon. Welcome. My name is Jim Davis and we're coming to
you live from the Fluke Networks Technical Assistant Center here in Everett, Washington.
Today we're going to be talking about some of the major features and
improvements that we've included in our version 6.1 firmware.
We always suggest that people install the latest firmware in our testers.
It's a free upgrade and it can be downloaded from our webpage.
Let's demonstrate these features.
The first two are related to our OTDR testing.
They work with both our OptiFiber Pro OTDR and the new
OptiFiber HDR OTDR our more high power OTDR that we've just launched this year,
so let's run a test here.
Now this can happen with the OptiFiber Pro,
but we expect it more often with the HDR where people are using these
APC connectors, single mode, APC connectors.
Now good mated pair of single mode APC connectors is going to look very much
like a fusion splice or a mechanical splice. They're not.
There's not going to be a reflective event.
There's going to be a loss event and I can see here this circle on our event map
applies to loss events and if we look at the trace,
we'll see that this does look just like a loss event and the OTDR can't tell the difference
between a fusion splice or a mechanical splice and an APC connector.
But I know that's an APC connector. I can see it on my demo box here,
so I don't want to have a red x and a failing value.
What is the difference between a APC connector and a loss event?
Well, for what it matters, we changed the budget that's allowed.
A loss event has given a budget of 0.3 DB and a connector 0.5 db.
So what's new in version 6.1 is this triangle.
In a click on this triangle and I'm going to tell the OTDR.
This is actually an APC connector. Now,
an APC connector with 0.5 db. We're green.
We're passing that event.
One new feature of version 6.1 another new feature of 6.1 is the following and
we expect this to happen more with HDR,
which is more likely to be used in an outside environment on longer single mode runs.
And that's the following.
My company was hired to replace a piece of fiber that was broken.
The big yellow fiber finder. Yeah, found the fiber and cut it.
So I'm not concerned about the whole length of fiber.
I'm not concerned about the first connection,
not concerned about the splitter that it's found here.
I'm worried just about the part where my company puts some fusion splices in the cut cable.
So I'm going to go to the home screen here.
Going to go to the tools menu. I'm going to select span.
Now I know that we were doing our work at about 1,230 meters.
So I'm going to tell the span to look at 1,220 meters until 1,260 meters.
That will cover the area where my fusion splices were installed
and we'll save that and let's push test to start.
So we've set our span and the span. I'm telling the OTDR,
I'm only interested in that piece of fiber that I was responsible for from 1,200 meters
1,220 to about 1,260 I'm not responsible for the very start of the fiber,
not responsible for the very end.
I just went and put those fusion splices and the part that had been broken.
Now what we see is the first part of the link here is grayed out,
not part of the report and the second section here is grayed out.
That's not going to be a part of it. We just have this 40 meter section.
That's what I'm worried about.
Now unfortunately for me in that 40 meter section,
we have this loss event that has too much loss.
My people didn't install a good fusion splice,
so we're going to be sending them back out there.
Now the final part in version 6.1 is support for a new M12 adapter.
You may be familiar with our M12 four position decode for data we've had out
for a few years now.
What's new is this M12 what they call an X code adapter.
Somebody told me the X code is for 10 Gig and same physical footprint,
but this has four pairs or eight conductors and the new version 6.1 firmware
will be able to support this adapter.
That's a quick summary of what we have in the new version 6.1 firmware.
The ability to adjust the type of event,
the ability to set a span port and support for the X code adapters.
Jim Davis coming to you from the Fluke Networks Technical Assistance Center,
Have a nice day.