Day 3 @ NBN Co

Fairly quiet day, finally got intranet access and spent a few hours exploring and doing the dreaded e-learns.  There’s a lot less bullshit than at Telstra, but then again Telstra had years to stockpile it, and even immediately there are traces of administrivia borne of the inevitable HR droids and “experienced” management.  I suppose its inescapable.

 

Slowing ploughing through a 1,165 page (!) “high level” design document, fuck me.  (As an aside, why does Outlook not recognize “ploughing” as a word??) A lot of the Ethernet transport stuff is not anything I have ever had to look at before, aggregation switches to transport switches to fanout switches, all with AVC and CVC VLAN tagging to keep everything under control.  All in layer 2, with a (naturally) layer 3 OAM channel to control and trap the kit.

 

Some of the DWDM gear is spec’d to do 88 simultaneous 10Gbps channels via WDM on a SMOF pair, wow – big iron.

 

Found out yesterday afternoon we’ll also be doing quite a bit of network surveillance, down to and including permitting access seeker (ISP) staff into POI sites remotely and monitoring them.  ISP rep calls from site, is either buzzed in remotely or issued a one-time keypad code by us, then we monitor the whole time via IP cam.  Big brother lurks.

 

I have been dobbed in to train the whole team in GPON operations and assurance, as I’m the only person who has actually had their hands on the kit.  Other people have transmission, DWDM and mobiles assurance backgrounds so they are solid, but no actual FTTP dirty hands other than mine.

 

I’m getting white card training next Wednesday so I can go onto construction sites.  Apparently it’s a matter of not falling down anything open and not walking behind the big yellow things, especially when they are beeping?

 

Also off to Alcatel for two day Thursday and Friday next week for GPON training, I expect to be bored but hey – the bunged on lunch is well worth it.  :D