Automated physical network systems based on robotic control and management of fiber optic interconnects

In a system of operating a data center physical fiber-optic interconnect fabric, the system providing automated network services including some or all of:

• provisioning, verification, audit, troubleshooting, and/or authentication using distributed robotic fiber cross-connects, the system comprising:
• a multiplicity of optical fiber signal carrying cables;
• and
• a software control system that generates a sequence of movement and sensing based instructions communicated to multiple distributed robotic fiber cross-connects to perform robot services;
• and
• the multiple distributed robotic fiber cross-connects having internal robots configured to plug and unplug signal carrying cables in accordance with a non-entangling algorithm to enable said robot services, the software control system further configured to confirm, authenticate, and track robot services and input them into a data file for storage,
• a method of visually identifying an end of a particular fiber-optic link with multiple fiber-optic cable segments connected end-to-end, within a dynamic fiber-optic interconnect fabric managed by an interconnect control system, with one of more of the fiber-optic cable segments connected to user ports of an NTM (Network Topology Manager), the NTM containing a multiplicity of reconfigurable internal fiber-optic strands with a fixed connectors at one end and a moveable connector at an other end, a movable connector being movable between one or more test ports and the user ports, each port associated with an external receptacle and internal receptacle joined midway along a central axis, and further with an OTDR (Optical Time-Domain Reflectometer) connected to one or more external test ports on the NTM through fiber-optic test cables, with any internal fiber-optic connectors able to be moved and inserted in an internal side of any port, the method comprising:
• instructing the interconnect control system to identify a particular fiber-optic link endpoint;
• and
• connecting the particular fiber-optic link to a visual laser at an intermediate point connected to the NTM, such that a dust cap at the end of the particular fiber-optic link is illuminated.

A system of operating a data center physical fiber-optic interconnect fabric, the system providing automated network services, including some or all of:

• provisioning, verification, audit, troubleshooting, and/or authentication using distributed robotic fiber cross-connects, the system comprising:
• a multiplicity of optical fiber signal carrying cables;
• and
• a software control system that generates a sequence of movement and sensing based instructions communicated to multiple distributed robotic fiber cross-connects to perform robot services;
• and
• the multiple distributed robotic fiber cross-connects having internal robots configured to plug and unplug signal carrying cables in accordance with a non-entangling algorithm to enable said robot services, the software control system further configured to confirm, authenticate and track robot services and input them into a data file for storage, wherein
• an internal connection within the robotic fiber cross-connect has an allocated state, in which the connection exhibits an insertion loss of less than 1 dB, and
• an internal connection also has an unallocated state, in which the connection exhibits an attenuation of greater than 30 dB, and
• the robotic fiber cross-connect is configured to autonomously transition internal connections between allocated and unallocated states, allowing interconnects to be disconnected, stored, and reconfigured without entanglement or performance degradation, and
• the system records connectivity history and a current physical interconnect state of individual cables and connectors to track provisioning, disconnection, and reconfiguration events.