In the telecommunications industry, delivering reliable network stability while supporting explosive technological growth is an unprecedented challenge. At Zayo, we continuously strive to excel in this complex environment, recognizing that for customers of all sizes, maximizing network availability is of considerable importance.
Aaron Werley, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Zayo, understands this better than most. When feedback from Zayo’s largest customers revealed that their business operations required circuit stability and performance “above what is typically found throughout the industry today,” Werley and his team knew they had to identify every opportunity to improve service performance, MTTR, and customer communications.
Our overarching goal is to become the vendor of choice by providing an experience above and beyond what our customers can receive elsewhere.
– Aaron Werley, SVP of Engineering.
This customer-first philosophy sparked a comprehensive network modernization initiative that’s transforming how Zayo designs, delivers, and secures connectivity services.
Turning Network Operations into a Science
Network operations have traditionally involved significant manual processes, from troubleshooting events to configuring services. This human element, while valuable, introduces inconsistency and potential delays that modern networks can’t afford.
“Automation is all about reducing the network touch and time our network operations team spends in the delivery and repair of services,” Werley explains. But the benefits extend far beyond speed.
Critical initiative focus points:
- Intelligent event handling: When network events occur, automated systems quickly determine root causes and failure locations to quickly point repair teams in the right direction, significantly reducing Mean Time to Repair (MTTR).
- Prepositioned network deployment: Advanced, thoughtfully planned network creates standardization, ensuring consistent configurations and improved data integrity, resulting in quicker, more efficient service delivery for customers.
“There’s no room for art in the network. Everything needs to be standardized and cookie cutter,” Werley emphasizes. This philosophy eliminates the “rogue designs and configurations” that can create anomalies and complicate network operations.
Advanced Monitoring: Intelligent Alarming Reduces MTTR
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Zayo’s modernization effort is the expansion of remote fiber monitoring and environmental sensing across thousands of route miles. These systems transform how the company detects, diagnoses, and responds to network issues.
Monitoring deployment to date:
- 24 environmental monitoring sites enabled
- 14,000+ route miles of metro fiber network monitoring
- 1400+ route miles of long-haul fiber network monitoring
Traditional fiber cut response historically involves multiple steps: network event, symptom recognition, technician dispatch for testing, and localization of the problem. This process typically takes multiple hours before repair crews even know where to go.
“Fiber monitoring detects cuts within minutes,” Werley notes. “You save potentially three plus hours of time in your MTTR right out of the gate.” The system quickly identifies not just that a cut occurred, but exactly where down to the foot.
Our monitoring approach not only pinpoints available fibers across our networks, enhancing delivery capabilities, but also ensures cable integrity. This improves delivery times and proactively identifies potential issues before they impact customer services, helping provide a seamless and reliable customer experience.
“How cool is it to be able to say to our customers, ‘Hey, you want a pair of fibers from Denver to Chicago? Great, I’ve got two on the shelf, intact end-to-end, available today,” Werley explains. This capability opens the opportunity for a transformed service delivery experience that cuts delivery times down.
Signal Through the Noise: Smarter Alerting Systems
Advanced monitoring generates enormous amounts of data, but more data isn’t always better. The key lies in transforming that data into actionable insights for network operations teams.
“You want to increase your signal-to-noise ratio, so that we only present the common underlying alarm to chase down,” Werley explains. This requires advanced data analysis to understand the relationships between network elements and find the root causes of problems.
We are enabling our monitoring systems to intelligently identify when multiple alerts come from the same issue, showing our operations team the main problem without flooding them with unnecessary notifications. This dramatically improves efficiency, reduces MTTR, and supports our customers better.
Beyond reactive monitoring, enhanced visibility enables predictive maintenance. By tracking conditions over time, teams can identify degrading spans and equipment before they fail completely. They can also schedule proactive repairs during maintenance windows, rather than dealing with unexpected outages.
High-Capacity Networks vs. High-Touch Operations
Long-haul fiber networks and the modern, high-capacity systems riding over them present a unique challenge. These systems carry massive amounts of data at incredible speeds, but they can be subject to occasional disruptions. Every time a technician needs to access a splice case for maintenance or new service installation, there’s potential for fiber disruption, resulting in “sub-second impacts,” or brief interruptions that can cascade into significant problems for customers running mission-critical applications.
Zayo’s historic fiber network architecture had opportunities for improvement, as it often mixed network uses across common shared infrastructure. By addressing these areas, we significantly reduce maintenance needs and minimize potential disruptions. For customers relying on these circuits for their core business operations, these advancements ensure greater stability and reliability.
Architectural Innovation: Separating Critical from Routine
Zayo’s solution reimagined network architecture to enhance reliability and efficiency. By separating long-haul and metro services, the team reduced network touch and minimized the risk of disruptions. This strategic shift ensures critical circuits are better protected during day-to-day network operations, enabling more secure and controlled operations.
“By further classifying and layering our network infrastructure, Zayo can institute policies and procedures specific to each layer and drive how we perform day-to-day activities,” Werley explains. This approach creates an “air gap” between highly sensitive traffic and daily functions.
The impact is clear: customers continue to receive seamless service delivery, while those utilizing high-bandwidth core services experience “far less maintenance activity and improved stability,” as Werley puts it.
The Path Forward: Continuous Innovation
Zayo’s network modernization isn’t a destination; it’s an ongoing journey of improvement and innovation. The architectural updates, automation implementations, and monitoring expansions represent the foundation for even more advanced capabilities and improved performance.
Our commitment to becoming the “vendor of choice” drives continuous refinement of these systems, with plans to expand monitoring coverage and further enhance the customer experience. As network demands continue to grow and customer expectations rise, these foundational investments in modernization, automation, and intelligence position Zayo to meet tomorrow’s challenges.