Summary

The Cisco ONS 15454 is a carrier-class MSPP that is easy to install, turn up, and operate. It can be said that CTC makes all this possible. CTC is one of the most unique user interfaces on the market for MSPP. The most important aspect of this GUI is that it is a real-time GUI. Thus, what you see on the screen is what is going on with the network or shelf. For instance, this could be in the way alarms are displayed (red, gold, or yellow), with changes made to cards or ports (in service, out of service), or in Circuit Wizard, for the creation of circuits end to end automatically.

When turning up a system, having the general information in hand makes this process much easier. Most individual nodes can be provisioned in a matter of minutes. The physical aspects of turning up the system could take longer. External cables for DS-1 or DS-3 terminations will take some time. Ensuring that the fiber cable pairs and jumpers meet the required specifications adds to the turn-up time as well.

Pre-engineering and planning go a long way in making the installation and provisioning of the Cisco ONS 15454 a relatively easy task.

For day-to-day operations of the Cisco ONS 15454, a PC connected to a node on a network, with CTC displaying the Network view, is probably the most convenient method of monitoring the network. If anything causes an alarm, it quickly is displayed on the screen, without any human interaction. With other MSPP GUIs, a person must poll the network to provide updates to changes in a network.

Having a Circuit Wizard in the GUI is also a great tool. Circuits can be created individually or as a group simply by following the wizard and inputting the information into the proper fields. For more information on circuits, refer to documentation located at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/optical/ps2006/tsd_products_support_series_home.html.