Over the last couple of years, we’ve talked a lot about an SSP client that has a very complex Telecom network. Most recently, this client identified a need to associate two fiber stands with one circuit to track transmit and receive paths. 

Users will continue to provision a circuit on the first fiber as descibed in both Having Fun with Logical Circuit Provisioning and Having (Even More) Fun with Logical Circuit Provisioning; however, to associate the second fiber within the same circuit, SSP manually split the fiber ports on certain devices in the model from Port 1 to Port 1T (Transmit) and Port 1R (Receive) to represent the fiber pair. This is how it’s now done:

To start, click on the Create System and Master Circuit icon within an edit session. This will bring up the Site Selector. In the example below, a user has expanded the site and then traversed to a specific building, rack, device, card slot, card and port combination within that site:

Once a user selects an available port (a port with a strand plugged into it) and then clicks the Create System/Master Circuit button, the Create System/Master Circuit window appears.

This window is broken out into three main sections, each of which is described below:

1. The section at the top displays both the available and vacant ports at the Limon Generation Station. Note that the Status for 001:003 is “Inbound from Trace” — this is what is inbound from Lincoln Switch, and is reflected in the Current Path window at the bottom left.
2. The Current (or Primary) Path window displays the current/primary path of the trace: from Lincoln Switch (Rack 103, Device A34, Port 001:001) to Limon Generation Station (Rack 101, Device A17, Port 001:003.
3. The Associated Path is now blank. This will be populated when a user clicks the Create Circuit button and chooses to create an associated (transmit/receive) path.

If a user selects Port 001:002 and clicks the Create Circuit button, the following message will pop up:

Clicking No will bring the user to the next Create System/Master Circuit window:

Filling out the white (editable) fields will create a System/Master Circuit from Lincoln Switch (the Origin) to Limon Generation Station (the Destination). This functionality hasn’t changed. BUT … if a user clicks Yes when prompted to create an associated (transmit/receive) path, the Create System/Master Circuit window will display the initial device chosen in the primary path:

This is where it gets exciting! Select an available port and click the Next Device button. When this happens the Associated Path section will be populated. This should match the primary path.

So the current path is from Lincoln Switch (001:001) to Limon Generation Station (001:003), and the associated path is from Lincoln Switch (001:002) to Limon Generation Station (001:004). Click the Create Circuit button and fill out the white (editable) fields as before.

To find the circuit just created, return to System Manager to do a search.

And, as before, a user can now use System Manager to trace, select, delete, etc. the System/Master Circuit just created. And — also just as before — clicking on the Logical Circuit Manager tab will bring up the Logical Circuit Manager window where a user can see the path of the new circuit.