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The network

Before touching FiberQ's buttons, the network itself has to make sense: what it is made of, and in what order. That is what this section is for.

Sources

Much of what follows comes straight out of the FiberQ catalogue — the maintainer attached an <extracomment> note to 95 strings saying exactly what each term means in this plugin. Where that is the source, the page says so. Where it is general industry knowledge, it says that too.

Three levels, one logic

An FTTH network divides into three levels, and FiberQ's three cable classes map onto them exactly:

flowchart LR
    ODF["ODF<br/><small>head end</small>"]
    NODE["network node"]
    DP["distribution point<br/><small>OTB / TB</small>"]
    TO["TO<br/><small>subscriber</small>"]

    ODF -- "backbone" --> NODE
    NODE -- "distribution" --> DP
    DP -- "drop" --> TO
Level Cable class What it does
1 Backbone Carries traffic between the main network nodes
2 Distribution From a backbone node out to the street distribution points
3 Drop From a distribution point to one subscriber's premises

These three appear in FiberQ's menu twice — once under Underground, once under Aerial.

Two ways to lay it: underground and aerial

The same three classes can be installed either way:

Cable runs in a duct or a trench. Manholes sit along the route — underground inspection chambers giving access to the cable. Where the route crosses under a road, railway or watercourse, a large transition pipe is laid and the smaller ducts are pulled through it.

Civil works

Cable is strung on poles. The run between two poles is a span. Some elements are mounted directly on the pole — Pole OTB, Pole TO.

What sits on the line

A cable rarely runs from A to B uninterrupted and alone. Along the way there are:

  • Joint closures — where fibres are spliced together
  • Slack — spare cable coiled at a point so it can be re-spliced later
  • Elements — ODF, OTB, TB, TO, patch panels

Elements · Cables · Optical slack

Two things to keep straight in FiberQ

Two terms that translate wrongly if you go by the English alone:

Object means building

In FiberQ, Object renders the legacy Serbian objekat — a building. The layer it writes to confirms it: its fields are number of floors, basement levels, street and house number.

Georgian QGIS meanwhile translates the GIS term feature as ობიექტი ("object"). So: Feature → ობიექტი, Object → შენობა.

Route is a physical alignment

Route is the path on the ground that cables follow — not a travel route, and not a file or network path. Georgian has a dedicated engineering word for it: ტრასა.