Where may one go to get Fiber trained and certified on their own?

[BillieWhiskers]

I have called around my town asking network install companies. Many said they had somone come in and train their people on a particular product. I would like to get some training to add on my resume. Seems like a somewhat rarer talent.

Thanks in advance.

 

[daronwilson]

Fiber training can be a little tricky. Several companies will offer generic training to you and a group at your location such as Light Brigade. Many manufactures and vendors will provide training as well in a similar environment. Certainly you should check out some trade shows for training classes, I went to a few sponsored by suppliers like Corning, Seicor that showed how to use their product at the trade show for not much money.

However, if you just want to learn, I would recommend

http://www.fotec.com

and check the link for fiber-u. You can order books and a self study type course that gets you pretty familiar with the business. If you want more hands on experience, contact the vendors and explain you are interested in doing fiber, and see when they can have a sales rep come by and demo thier product. This will usually get you the opportunity to terminate and test a little bit of fiber. If you do it right, you can get several vendors to stop by and show you the different systems that are out there.

I did the fotec fiber-u thing, followed it up with several trade show introductions to different products and started putting the product together. Fortunately I could afford to get two different types of systems, a fiber power meter and OTDR which lets me pretty much do whatever I want and make it work.

If you are just looking for resume stuff, I would go the fiber-u route, get the certification from them and put that down.

Good Luck

Daron J. Wilson
Telecom Manager
LH Morris Electric, Inc.

 

[BillieWhiskers]

Thank You Daron,

Fotec.com looks pretty good to me.

 

[mpstech]

Light Brigade is one.

Bicsi offers courses

http://www.bicsi.org

Mike

 

[No1Bombay]

BICSI is THE recognized industry leader, but expensive. Fiber isn't all that hard even if have to learn it on your own. If you could demonstrate self-taught competency to a potential employer perhaps they'd pay for your certification classes. Also, get in touch with major manufacturers like Hubbell. They often employ BICSI Certified people to represent them and if purchasing their products will often come in and train for little or nothing. I think one of the best kept secrets in cabling is that fiber is much easier than most people think and vendors capitalize on that by charging very large sums to install it. Best wishes.

 

[daronwilson]

Good advice indeed. There are many vendors that will provide onsite training of how to install their product. It isn't hard to learn to do. To do it well, it does require some practical experience and practice. I guess it is like everything else.

Software is the same way, it doens't take a row of initials after your name to make software work. In fact, many software vendors will come out and demo the product and show you how it works. Some will even help you get it installed and running. I think one of the best kept secrets in software is that the installation is much easier than most people think and vendors can capitalize on that by charging very large sums to support it.

However....on a monday morning when the network is down and people can't get their email....is that when you really want to stand up and say 'ah, did it all myself, it was pretty easy, I didnt need to hire a professional'?

Many times I go out to installations with trouble and they explain that they did the wiring themselves (well, they dont have to explain it's obvious) and it has worked for a year, but now they have been moving up to 100 mbs and it just is terribly slow. A non-critcal installation was no problem untill now when they want to increase speed. Now I must explain to them that I have to go through every portion of the cabling and find where the problems are. Improper jack termination? Improper cable runs? It could take some time to fix. The same is the case for fiber. With a media converter on it it'll probably roll along at 100 mbs no problem, ready to jump to Gigabit? Sometimes a different story depending on the type of fiber installed and the quality of the installation.

My point is this. If you are a good craftsperson, picking up fiber skills will be easy. Practice with it and you will become able to do quality work. View it with a microscope, test it with a light loss meter, maybe do an OTDR shoot and make sure nothing was damaged in installation.

The previous post makes it sound like we just jack up the price because we don't think anyone else can do it. I disagree, much like I disagree that most software people charge too much for just typing a few keystrokes. Some portions of the job require expensive equipment, try picking up a fusion splicer or OTDR, you can dump $25k in tools in a hurry. Also you pay for some experience and design in many cases.

Anyway, I'll step down from my soapbox, good luck with your fiber, lots of places to learn it.

Daron J. Wilson, RCDD
Telecom Manager
LH Morris Electric, Inc.
daron.wilson@lhmorris.com

 

[Warped]

Hi

If you want generic Fiber training possibly go to levitons site and email them for a distrutor in your local area. Then contact your local cable distributor and they most likely will have quarterly fiber training sponsered by Leviton which exposes you to fiber standards, topology configurations and the course will cost about the cost of the fiber termination kit (complete fiber kit that allows you to terminate end to end fiber). This is a good starting point. You will gain knowledge in fiber standards, do's and don'ts and hands on terminating fiber. Plus you get to keep the termination kit which is worth here in Canada about 600.00 that works out to about 375.00 USD.

I took this course and have done fiber installations in my place of employment and I have had NO problems.

sincerely

Vaughn