Week 10

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 any breaks are in the cable. 

Blogging Wrap Up: 
For the most part, I don't enjoy writing stuff online for people to see, that's why I have basically zero social media presence. These blogging assignments essentially force you into doing that (even though no one is going to read these, I now have more of a digital footprint now than I would have preferred). 

I don't think I will continue to blog in the future just due to what I just mentioned, but if the main reason I'm going to be blogging is for myself to come back and use it as a reference material, I may as well just do it offline in a notebook or similar. 

 

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