I'm hunting for a remote fiber distance measurement.

Question: I'm hunting for a remote fiber distance measurement. Some of our fiber runs are hundreds of kilometers from tech support. I was looking for a unit to constantly measure cable distance (ex. 80km) and if it suddenly changes to 45km, we know where the break is, and can directly dispatch the splicer... Any ideas?

Answer: An OTDR is the best solution for this. To run an OTDR for constant measurement you would want to get one that runs at a different wavelength than your system, so you can multiplex it onto the fiber and monitor while not disturbing network traffic. The only issue would be that an OTDR can only measure one fiber at a time, so you may wish to pair it up with an optical switch to continuously switch between fibers being monitored.