With higher speeds comes increased sensitivity to more factors in the network, creating problems that earlier and slower networks could tolerate with little or no impact. But while continuous upgrades in technology have resulted in more dynamic and adapting networks today, the fundamental requirements for fiber performance remains mostly unchanged. Establishing and maintaining networks requires accurate testing of the fiber infrastructure to ensure it can handle the system’s performance requirements and keep it operational. There are a wide range of tools that can accomplish these tasks, but there is arguably no other single instrument more important for testing and maintaining fiber networks than the Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR).
