First off, thanks to everyone who has replied, both on and off list, I've 
gotten some very good information on this, raising things I hadn't considered, 
particularly involving testing and warranties.

Daniel Seagraves wrote:
<Is it appropriate to just say "When installing fiber-optic cable the vendor 
will ensure the resulting installation does not suck."?>

Getting an installation that doesn't suck is indeed the core of the matter. 
However, "doesn't suck" is a rather vague concept as a point of law in case you 
have to sue your vendor for having installed something that sucks. That's why I 
was looking for a set of standards that I can point to and say (as an example)  
"your installation sucks, and it sucks because you didn't follow X standard, 
and ran unshielded fiber at a 90 degree angle over a knife edge."

< Maybe there should be a legal definition of the concept of suck, so that 
suckage could be contractually minimized.>

Unfortunately vendors install suckage all the time. Our own particular horror 
story was one of our schools where half the school was experiencing 
intermittent issues of crosstalk, lag, unexplained packet loss, etc. Some days 
it was fine, others it wasn't and it took us some time to find out that the 
cabling vendor had connected the two network closets via plain old cat 5 cable, 
a run that was considerably longer than 300 feet. You wouldn't normally expect 
to have to specify to telecommunications vendors that you don't exceed the 
maximum cable length, but there it was. We replaced that link with multimode, 
and the problems immediately vanished. I'm sure others have similar stories. 

A number of people have asked for more details on the project and I 
deliberately didn't put those in because I was looking more for a standard 
that, if followed, produces acceptable link no matter what the project details 
are. For the curious, it's a simple point-to-point link involving an existing 
building and new construction that are about a mile apart . It will be 
singlemode, we will provide the racks on both ends, and we're specifying SC 
terminations. Whether we own or lease the fiber, lit or dark, depends on the 
economics of the quotes that come back to us. It's not a complicated project, 
but I shouldn't have to re-write a cabling spec as part of the RFP just to keep 
the vendors honest. A number of good references have been sent to me so I think 
I'm all set. Thanks, NANOG! :)

---Sam 



-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Seagraves [mailto:dseag...@humancapitaldev.com] 
Sent: Monday, November 14, 2011 9:58 AM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Cable standards question


On Nov 14, 2011, at 8:42 AM, Sam (Walter) Gailey wrote:

> "The vendor will provide fiber connectivity between (building A) and 
> (building B). Vendor will be responsible for all building penetrations and 
> terminations. When  installing the fiber-optic cable the vendor will follow 
> the appropriate TIA/EIA 568 standards for fiber-optic cabling."
> 
> Any suggestions or examples of language would be very appreciated. Offlist 
> contact is probably best.

Is it appropriate to just say "When installing fiber-optic cable the vendor 
will ensure the resulting installation does not suck."?
That would seem to me to be the most direct solution to the problem. I mean, 
standards are all well and good, but what if the standard sucks?
Then you'd be up a creek.

Maybe there should be a legal definition of the concept of suck, so that 
suckage could be contractually minimized.



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