Creating a Circuit ID Format

Tue Aug 22 20:50:40 UTC 2017

On Tue, 22 Aug 2017, James Bensley wrote:

> In my opinion the circuit ID should be an abitrary (but unique) value
> and nothing more. As Nick suggested start at 1 and go up. If your
> company is called ABC Ltd then maybe have your first circuit ID as
> ABC00000001 and count up from there, it's as simple as that.
>
> For me, all the circuit ID should be is a record number/ID of a
> database entry and nothing more (or a search string). Some people like
> to have circuit IDs which include circuit types, or circuit speeds, or
> interface type, but as you asked, do you then change the circuit ID if
> the circuit speed changes, or the interface types changes, or the
> medium etc?

Agreed.  I designed something similar at a previous employer, and it just 
used a date-coded ID with sequence number (ex: UOP 20170822.0001), and 
then all of the cross-connect details were recorded in a place that was 
better suited to capturing that sort of information.  That would also 
allow us to re-use fiber paths when we upgraded 1G links to 10G, etc.

This also included IDs that could reference other circuit IDs - including 
circuit IDs from other providers - so we could tie non-dark elements 
together, such as waves through DWDM gear end up riding on separate dark 
fiber paths on either side of the mux.

The biggest obstacle was getting people to label fiber jumpers in the 
field, but that obstacle went away as people get a better understanding of 
it and having all of the cross-connects documented saved lots of time and 
frustration when having to search through a large patch field at 3 AM...

jms