Fibre Optic Circulators

[jethro66]

I fear I'm about to join the club of "newbies", because I haven't searched thoroughly enough on this topic. I'm sorry in advance but here goes.

How do I deal with a Fibre Optic Circulator in my Data Centre so that a Cable Trace includes this device along the full path ? I guess it's a Pass Through Device, but I don't understand how to patch from by Router to this circulator, and then back out of the circulator and then onto the Carrier's FOBOT. I can create a device called "Circulator" with two front ports, but how do I joint these together inside the device as a passthrough ? If I assign the two ports as interfaces, I lose the Cable Trace path. I'm absolutely sure I should be able to do this, but have been unable to determine the "keywords" in this discussion thread to search for previous posts/discussions.....Sorry :-(

[jsenecal]

You almost got it right. You need a front and a rear port, and link one to the other.

[jethro66]

Thanks for the reply.....so I don't use two front ports ? I use a front port and a rear port, link the two together like you would normally when using a patch panel, but you then connect the rear port to a front port to another device ? I'll give it a go....thankyou

[jethro66]

So I used this approach (my interpretation of what you suggested) and it works, and I see the cable path as I would have hoped for…thankyou…. but…I don’t think that a “User” of our system is going to be able to intuitively work out how this is cabled, or how to enter these patches when using Netbox. The LC type TX/RX port is on the front panel, and they will find that okay, but the SC Type Line port (Bi-Directional) is also on the front panel (but using a rear port in Netbox). Is there a way that you can create a pass through between two front ports so that the User would instantly know with intuition, ie “ Hey….there’s the TX/RX Front Port….and there’s the Line Port as a single conection…also a front port” ?

[jsenecal]

you can always do [front-rear-"fake-cable"-rear-front] but Rear and Front ports have a different meaning than their physical aspects in netbox.

Have a look at the docs:
https://netboxlabs.com/docs/netbox/en/stable/models/dcim/frontport/
https://netboxlabs.com/docs/netbox/en/stable/models/dcim/rearport/