BSIT220

This week we discussed some of the tools available for troubleshooting networks not behaving properly.  One of the physical tools available is called an Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) which is used to detect where a break in a fiber optic cable has occurred. It in essence sends a very fast pulse of light down an optical cable and measures how fast and how much light returns. When light hits a break in the cable, some of the light will be reflected from that point. Since light has a well defined speed, we can use the time from the transmission to the receiving to figure out where a break in the cable is (or that there is in fact a break in the cable at all, and there is not some other factor in place). This information can be used to repair the cable or determine if it's better to just pull a new fiber in its place.  There is a similar tool called a time domain reflectometer which sends pulses of electricity down a copper cable. Similarly, this can also tell you where...

While documentation may be one of the most preached practices for network and computer techs alike, it also seems to be one of the most neglected. Techs often forget to write documentation at all or write objectively bad documentation with not enough information to help the next guy. I have started trying to get better at this myself and have taken to writing notes whenever I come across a problem I’ve never seen before and am working on creating documentation for well established processes that have never been documented, or have changed since the last documentation. We have also implemented a new ticketing software that allows you to write internal notes and such on tickets which can be useful to refer to in the future.