u/ahmadafef

Your opinion please - I've created my own mapping and monitoring platform

Hello,

TLDR - Skip here

A few days ago, I asked which GIS software you use to map your fiber deployments, and a lot of you replied. First off, thank you to everyone who commented or reached out through DMs. I genuinely appreciate the help and advice I get from this community.

Most of the suggestions were either software that costs thousands of dollars per year, or tools like Google Earth and QGIS that are honestly difficult for me to work with. They may be easy for some of you, but they just weren’t a good fit for me.

So I started thinking: surely building something basic for my own needs can’t be that difficult. I don’t need a giant enterprise platform. I just need lines and dots on a map, proper tracing, and some sort of alerting system when things fail.

About 30 hours later, I ended up building my own platform.

TLDR:

It integrates directly with my existing systems and already provides pretty much everything I need. It still has some rough edges, but at this point I’d say it’s around 90% feature complete, and honestly, it already does more than I originally planned.

This post is not an AD or a promotion. I’m not selling the software, and I’m not offering it as a SaaS product. I’m simply asking for honest feedback. Take a look and tell me what you think. If you feel something important is missing, I’d really like to hear it.

Right now, the platform supports:

  • Poles
  • OLTs
  • NIDs
  • ODFs
  • Enclosures
  • Cabinets
  • Splices
  • Splitters
  • Patch cables
  • Fiber cables (drop, backbone, etc.)
  • Conduits

The system can trace a client all the way back to the OLT while displaying every pole, splitter, connector, and fiber strand involved in that customer’s path. It also calculates signal degradation automatically based on distance, splice count, splitters, and connectors.

It reads the ONU list directly from the OLT and assigns ONUs to users on the map. That allows me to detect degraded connections in real time. The system can send alerts by email for signal degradation and service outages automatically.

I also added something I’ve always wanted: a proper NOC display. Real-time traffic, alarms, warnings, and network status dashboards. Basically the kind of thing you see in movies. Yes, I’m a nerd.

At the moment, the system integrates with Ubiquiti OLTs. I’m planning to add VSOL support as soon as I can buy one for testing.

So again. What do you think?

u/ahmadafef — 4 hours ago

What Are You Using for Fiber Infrastructure Mapping?

Hello,

I wanted to ask what tools or platforms you’re using to build and manage your fiber network maps, including poles, drop cables, customer locations, and related infrastructure.

I’m still a relatively small provider, so solutions like VETRO FiberMap are difficult to justify financially at this stage. I also tried QGIS, but my experience hasn’t been great. I ran into several issues with elements resetting, objects that couldn’t be removed properly, and other bugs that made it hard to work with reliably.

What I’m really looking for is something that offers a clean and user-friendly experience similar to VETRO, but at a more reasonable cost for a smaller operation.

I’d appreciate any recommendations or insight into what others in the industry are using.

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u/ahmadafef — 4 days ago