The Fiber Restoration Process

How goBEC Fiber is Restored After Damage

1. Check Communication Services

At this stage, we ensure our electronics at the Central Office are up and functioning. Services like DHCP (the service that gives you an internet address) and DNS (the service that turns a name like google.com into the address that a computer would understand) are verified and tested during this step. Also, checking that our outbound links to the greater internet are functional.

2. Repair Ring Communications

Verification that the physical fiber connecting our remote cabinets are up and functional. This might involve some cable splicing or replacement, which can take some time.

3. Establish Connection to Remotes

After the ring communications are verified functional, we can establish the links to the remotes, verify the electronics are in good shape, and begin getting the physical lines to the splitters up and going.

4. Repair Data Transmission Lines / Feeder Lines

This step involves ensuring the fibers that feed the neighborhood cabinets are functional. These lines connect the neighborhood cabinets back to the remote, and as such, one fiber going down can take up to 32 people offline, so these are important. There may be many such fibers feeding into one of the neighborhood cabinets, so just because your neighbor has internet, you very well may be on a different feeder.

5. Repair neighborhood feeder cabinets

Here is where the feeder fibers are split into up to 32 individual service drops and are what connects your individual service drop back to the feeders. At this stage, we have signal making it into your neighborhood, and dependent on the damage to the lines in the neighborhood, you might have service at this point. Once again, just because your neighbor has service, you might not due to each service having their own fiber at this point.

6. Connect individual service drops.

At this stage, we are almost done getting service restored to you. This step is the equivalent of getting the power from the pole to your meter. Here is where the individual fiber is spliced from the cabinet into the line that comes up to the side of your home. This is the last step in the restoration process.