British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

Stephen Beaumont

Christopher Byron Hatch

Neil Parkin

Albert Rafel Porti

Jonathan Hitchen

The present disclosure provides a method of measuring the effectiveness of an intervention in a hybrid fiber-metal access network. The effectiveness measure is determined in accordance with the improvement in the attenuation and the maximum achievable data rate. The effectiveness measure is used to determine whether a further network intervention is required.

Measurement method

Embodiments disclosed herein provide a hybrid fiber-copper access network in which a main OLT sends data to the DSLAMs via a plurality of point-to-point optical fiber connections. A standby OLT is provided which has a plurality of point-to-multi-point optical fiber connections to the DSLAMs. In the event of a failure, data can be sent to some of the DSLAMs via the standby OLT and the point-to-multi-point optical fiber connections. Following the rectification of the fault, the network can revert to its normal state and transmit data to the DSLAMs via the main OLT and the plurality of point-to-point optical fiber connections.

Communications network

The performance of a test apparatus for a communications network may be inferred by analyzing a set of performance data results measured on a number of different lines in the network. Once a sample of sufficient size for a particular test apparatus has been created then it is possible to infer the performance of the test apparatus based on the ratio of passes to fails recorded.

The present invention provides a method of testing a transmission line from a copper access network. The transmission line is tested to generate values for a plurality of network parameters. Using previously determined test results, it is possible to calculate an estimate of the length of the transmission line based on the values of each of the measured parameters. These estimates of the transmission line length can then be used to compute a weighted average of the transmission line length. An inference of the condition of the transmission line can be made by comparing the estimates of the length of the transmission line with the weighted average length.

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London, United Kingdom

Stephen Beaumont