Capstone - Benjamin Wright

Running Head: TITLE OF YOUR PAPER 1
Migration of copper DS1 Circuits to a Fiber Network
Benjamin Wright
A Capstone Presented to the Information Technology College Faculty
of Western Governors University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Science in Degree Area Information Technology: Network Management
12/15/2014

TITLE OF YOUR PAPER 2
Abstract
Migration of copper DS1 Circuits to a Fiber Network
This capstone project is intended to address the rising maintenance costs and shrinking reliability
of DS1 circuits on an aging copper network. There is a business need to reduce these costs for
telecommunication companies to remain competitive in the market place.
In order to facilitate the business need, a migration of legacy copper TLS/DS1 circuits on an
individual Service Provider network to a Gigabit Passive Optical fiber network (GPON) will be used to
alleviate increasing maintenance costs and deliver a more robust monitoring functionality. Addressing
two separate groups' needs within the project will affect a more successful final outcome. External
stakeholders are customers who receive service below their Service Level Agreements in terms of
outages. Internally, impacted stakeholders are operation centers and capacity management teams who
will need training to work with the new technology.
A phased approach first utilizing a manual migration of embedded base customers who
are experiencing chronic issues will be implemented. The second phase will be to migrate
existing customers who are not experiencing chronic issues as they look to change or move their
service to a new location which is supported by the GPON network. The expectation is that by
moving customers to the GPON architecture the company will save costs in maintenance and
allow for a better monitoring of issues and capacity that would impact the customer experience.

MIGRATION OF COPPER DS1 CIRCUITS TO A FIBER NETWORK 3
Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 5
Project scope............................................................................................................................................. 5
Defense of the Solution............................................................................................................................. 6
Methodology Justification ........................................................................................................................ 6
Analysis of the Problem................................................................................................................................ 7
Problem Statement.................................................................................................................................... 7
Problem Causes......................................................................................................................................... 7
Stakeholder Impacts.................................................................................................................................. 8
Problem Analysis ...................................................................................................................................... 8
Solution ....................................................................................................................................................... 11
Approach Justification ............................................................................................................................ 11
Risk Assessment...................................................................................................................................... 12
Project Requirements and Design............................................................................................................... 15
Execution Requirements ......................................................................................................................... 15
Existing Gaps.......................................................................................................................................... 15
Project Development and Implementation.................................................................................................. 16
Project Plan............................................................................................................................................. 16
Scope. .................................................................................................................................................. 16
Assumptions. ....................................................................................................................................... 16
Project phases...................................................................................................................................... 17
Time-lines. .......................................................................................................................................... 17
Dependencies. ..................................................................................................................................... 18
Resource Requirements. ..................................................................................................................... 19
Risk Factors. ....................................................................................................................................... 20
Important Milestones. ......................................................................................................................... 20
Deliverables. ....................................................................................................................................... 21
Project Development............................................................................................................................... 22
Implementation Plan ............................................................................................................................... 22
Strategy for the implementation.......................................................................................................... 22
Phases of the roll out........................................................................................................................... 23
Details of the project launch. .............................................................................................................. 23

Dependencies. ..................................................................................................................................... 24
Deliverables. ....................................................................................................................................... 24
Training plan for users. ....................................................................................................................... 25
Quality Assurance....................................................................................................................................... 26
Quality Assurance Approach................................................................................................................... 26
Solution Testing ...................................................................................................................................... 27
Revisions ................................................................................................................................................. 28
Summative Evaluation Plan.................................................................................................................... 28
Disseminating Results............................................................................................................................. 28
Post Implementation Support and Issues .................................................................................................... 30
Post Implementation Support.................................................................................................................. 30
Post Implementation Support Resources ................................................................................................ 30
Maintenance Plan.................................................................................................................................... 31
Conclusion, Outcomes, and Reflection....................................................................................................... 32
Project Summary..................................................................................................................................... 32
Deliverables ............................................................................................................................................ 32
Outcomes ................................................................................................................................................ 32
Reflection ................................................................................................................................................ 33
References ................................................................................................................................................... 34
Appendix A:................................................................................................................................................ 35

Introduction
As legacy copper networks age, the cost of maintaining and expanding coverage,
functionality, and availability increase greatly. These costs necessitate the need to move from
copper legacy networks to fiber network infrastructure. The National Broadband Network
(NBN) of Australia estimates the savings in maintenance costs alone will be upwards of AU$700
million once copper networks have been migrated to fiber (Lui, 2012). With the expansive
networks and customer base in the United States, the gains in costs savings will be even greater.
The risk of not exploring every avenue in regards to migration possibilities will expose
telecommunication companies to a loss of competitiveness in the industry if they do not adopt
the next generation fiber architectures.
Migration of DS1 business circuits from copper legacy facilities to established Gigabit
Passive Optical Networks (GPON) will enable these maintenance cost savings for corporate
business partners. Equipment and processes in the telecommunication industry today have
developed to the point where this technology is becoming standardized as companies continue to
employ strategies to realize the potential gains. Not only will migration of embedded customer
base from copper to GPON reduce maintenance costs but will also facilitate a more reliable
network as it can be more easily monitored for potential issues in real time:
Project scope
The scope of this capstone will encompass the migration of DS1 circuits on copper
networks that have experienced multiple trouble reports by consumers within the last year. They
will be termed 'chronics' as the customer is seeing chronic issues with the circuit. This will be
considered phase I of the overarching migration plan for DS1 circuits. What will not be covered
by this capstone is the migration of customers' DS1 circuits that are not having issues prior to
migration nor will the placing of new DS1 customers on the GPON infrastructure.

Defense of the Solution
Over time a telecommunications provider's networks degrade and become unreliable
incurring significant maintenance and replacement costs to combat these issues. Competitors are
moving towards fiber networks which are more reliable and cheaper to maintain. This
necessitates that to stay competitive costs must be cut. The best way to cut costs is through the
reduction of maintenance expenditures through migrating premium revenue generating DS1
circuits to GPON infrastructure.
The migration to GPON infrastructure of DS1 circuits will help to keep these
maintenance costs low while providing more reliability to customers. This migration will also
give the provider new functionality to monitor the network allowing it to anticipate issues
shifting maintenance costs left from reacting to a crisis to early detection and resolution before it
impacts the customer. These reduction in maintenance costs and anticipation of issues will be a
major business driver to keep a competitive edge.
Methodology Justification
The methodology used in this project utilizes standard life cycle development processes
for telecommunication providers. Through this process, the intent here is to lower the cost of
implementing a migration by leveraging the existing GPON network, enhancing existing GUIs,
and only adding a TA5000 in new equipment. This methodology to migrate customers from a
copper network to GPON infrastructure is one that is used today to gain buy-in from
stakeholders in global network providers and will likely gain acceptance from executive
leadership.

Analysis of the Problem
Problem Statement
As introduced earlier, the aging copper networks that currently support DS1 circuits for
business customers are continuing to incur greater maintenance costs year over year while
realizing less availability and reliability over time. This means that in order to stay competitive
telecommunications providers must find a way to deliver business DS1 circuits over a new
physical medium. The GPON medium for data distribution has developed new functionalities to
allow the ability to monitor service for disruption or potential disruption. This and its wide
spread provider footprint due to residential use, makes GPON a prime candidate for use in the
migration of business DS1 circuits from copper to GPON fiber optic infrastructure (Business
Class Services over a GPON Network, 2014).
In the long-term providers must convert as much of their embedded customer base to
fiber optics as the copper facilities become obsolete and decayed. Migrating to a GPON
infrastructure does make the sense when considering the footprint but security needs to be
addressed due to residential GPON networks typically being setup in an unprotected mode
(Business Class Services over a GPON Network, 2014). This will need to be cared for prior to
migrating the first customers from the copper to GPON infrastructure.
Problem Causes
The single biggest factor when it comes to the degradation of the legacy copper network
facilities is that of water seeping into network elements and wires causing corrosion to take place
(Liu, 2014). This leads to slower data speeds or outages. The copper wires also do not carry
enough bandwidth to incorporate monitoring services and functionality to help anticipate

disruptions. These issues are what causes the legacy copper network to be less competitive in the
business telecommunications services market.
Stakeholder Impacts
Several stakeholders are impacted by the implementation of this project or the
lack of implementation of this project. This first and most important stakeholder to the
livelihood of the provider is that of the customer. Implementing the project will cause a short
outage during the migration but will resolve all issues involving the decaying copper
infrastructure. Not implementing the project will leave the customer with an unreliable network.
The second stakeholder impacted is the technician group that will be doing the
migrations in the field at the customer premises as well as responding to chronic trouble issues.
Implementing the project will reduce the resources needed in the long run, due to the fact that
only one additional visit to the customer premises will be necessary to migrate and resolve the
customer's chronic issues. This will reduce maintenance costs over time. Not implementing the
project will keep customer issues unresolved leading to recurring maintenance resource costs in
the technician group.
An additional stakeholder group is that of the telecommunication provider
business group that will be laying out the funds from its budget to put this project in progress.
As it is providing funding from its budget, it will be impacted by the success or failure of the
project. Upon success it will realize the gains that are enabled by the savings in maintenance
costs.
Problem Analysis
Cost Analysis
The cost of implementing a migration of copper DS1 circuits to existing GPON
infrastructure must take into account several factors. The first of which being equipment. As

this project necessitates leveraging existing GPON fiber networks the only tangible equipment
cost will be in the form of purchasing an Adtran Total Access 5000 (TA5000) for every 320 DS1
circuits to be migrated as that is the capacity for one TA500 (DS1 Line Module Total Access
5000, 2006). In the first phase of the migration, only one TA5000 will be necessary in each
Central Office at the cost of $40,000.
The second factor that must be incorporated into project costs are in the form of
resources. As this project will also leverage existing internal provisioning applications, there
will be minimal need for software development and testing work. Roughly 300 man hours to
develop and test a new screen for engineering users to kick off the migration process. Another
100 person hours will be applied towards training of the users and engineers to facilitate and
support the migration process once in production. The biggest overhead in resource costs is
adding the new network element to the GPON infrastructure and supporting it throughout the
migration process. The per hour costs are calculated by rough cost to company based on salary,
benefits, and infrastructure needs.
(Adtran, 2014)
Risk Analysis
There are two major risks that accompany migrating DS1 copper circuits that have
chronic issues to fiber GPON infrastructure. The first of which is the lack of experience with
existing workers in the field who will be physically at the customer location installing the new
ONT at the customer premises. The risk here is customer facing can impact the providers
Expense QTY Cost per Unit Total
Adtran TA500 32 DS1 Port Card 10 $4,000.00 $40,000.00
Software Development and Testing 500 $100.00 $50,000.00
Training 100 $100.00 $10,000.00
Network Setup and Support 300 $100.00 $30,000.00
Total $130,000.00

reputation with the customer. This risk can be mitigated by extensive training prior to migration
as well as field technicians having support by development and testing teams who gained
experience during the software development life cycle.
The second risk being the adding of the Adtran TA5000 to the GPON
infrastructure in each Central Office. This risk, while not as major since it is not customer facing
and the provider can limit migrations until the addition is complete, can cause the slipping out of
migration time-lines if not completed correctly. This risk can be mitigated by leveraging Adtran
vendor support to correctly and quickly add the new network element to the infrastructure.

Solution
When making the decision to implement a migration of DS1 circuits from copper to
GPON infrastructure, the question of where and how much is a telecommunication provider
willing to pay to keep their customers in service at an acceptable level comes into play. The
options are only to not migrate circuits to GPON or to migrate to GPON. In this section the
justification for a migration to take place is explored as well as the impacts if no migration were
to take place.
Mitigating the possible negative consequences of doing nothing will entail migrating
customers experiencing chronic issues with their DS1 copper service to the providers existing
GPON infrastructure, thus implementing Phase 1 of migrating the embedded customer base as
well as placing new DS1 circuits on to the GPON infrastructure. Phase 1 of the solution will
require the pre-work of addressing the TA5000 addition to the existing GPON infrastructure. It
will also entail developing a new GUI so that engineering technicians who are responding to
chronic issues can start the migration process to care for embedded base migration through the
use of existing provisioning and activation processes.
Approach Justification
Retaining a competitive edge is an imperative as a telecommunications provider.
Emerging technologies must be harnessed to drive down costs and improve functionality.
Without constant improvement to networks and processes, a telecommunication provider will
fall behind in terms of market share and lose their reputation as a quality service provider.
Successful implementation of the entire migration program will enable increased market share as
it will open the potential for both retail and wholesale sales of premium DS1 circuits in the long-
term.

Keeping costs down is also important to the corporate shareholders of telecommunication
providers. Even though initial project costs seem high at $50,000 per Central Office, the over all
savings enable at upwards of US$600,000,000 in the long-term make the investment well worth
the risk (Liu,2014). Accomplishing this is possible not only through cost savings due more
efficient and low maintenance fiber, but through being proactive via more robust monitoring
functionalities enabled in the GPON infrastructure. Monitoring allows the provider to be
proactive instead of reactive when troubles begin in the network. Moving the troubleshooting
and resolution prior to the actual occurrence of an issue costs significantly less than reacting in
crisis mode.
Risk Assessment
There are several risks that accompany migrating DS1 copper circuits that have chronic
issues to fiber GPON infrastructure. The one such risk is the damage of provider reputation due
to lack of experience with existing workers in the field who will be physically at the customer
location installing the new ONT at the customer premises. Steps can be taken to lessen this risk.
Through extensive training prior to migration as well as field technicians having support by
development and testing teams who gained experience during the software development life
cycle the provider will be able to mitigate the affects of this risk.
The another risk being the adding of the new network element, Adtran TA5000, to the
GPON infrastructure in each Central Office. This is less major in the regards of reputation since
it is not customer facing and the provider can limit migrations until the addition is complete. It
can however cause the slipping out of migration time-lines if not completed correctly. This risk
can be mitigated by leveraging Adtran vendor support to correctly and quickly add the new
network element to the infrastructure.

The biggest risks associated with a successful implementation will be the lack of
familiarity with the new Adtran TA5000 in the User, Application Development, and Testing
communities. It is assumed that unforeseen issues not realized during the requirements gathering
session will appear especially in dealing with TA5000 port assignment and activation. In order
to mitigate the impact of these issues to the project time-lines, additional personnel hours have
been built into the Software Development and Testing organizations. This will allow additional
resources to be brought on board to care for any issues that arise.
Cost Analysis
Implementing the migration plan of moving copper DS1 circuits to GPON infrastructure,
must take into account several costs. Equipment being one of the first costs that needs to be
addressed. This project leverages existing GPON fiber networks and only one new network
element will need to be purchased for each Central Office to be migrated. This network element
is an Adtran Total Access 5000 (TA5000). One will be needed for every 320 DS1 circuits to be
migrated. This number is derived as it is the capacity for one TA500 (DS1 Line Module Total
Access 5000, 2006). In the scope of this project only one will be needed. It is expected to cost
$40,000 (Adtran, 2014).
Human resources must also be taken into account in terms of cost for this project.
Existing internal provisioning applications will be reused here, so there will be minimal need for
software development and testing work. The expectation is that 300 person hours will be needed
to develop and test a new screen for engineering users to kick off the migration process. Another
100 person hours will be applied towards training of the users and engineers to facilitate and
support the migration process once in production. The second biggest cost in terms of human
resources is the work of physically adding the new network element to the GPON infrastructure
and supporting it throughout the migration process. The per hour costs are calculated by rough

cost to company based on salary, benefits, and infrastructure needs. Here that per unit costs is
tracked at US$100 per hour.
(Adtran, 2014)
Expense QTY Cost per Unit Total
Adtran TA500 32 DS1 Port Card 10 $4,000.00 $40,000.00
Software Development and Testing 500 $100.00 $50,000.00
Training 100 $100.00 $10,000.00
Network Setup and Support 300 $100.00 $30,000.00
Total $130,000.00

Project Requirements and Design
Execution Requirements
For the solution to be implemented, there will be a need for a network design and a
application design for process flows. The network design will be a high level design document
intended to incorporate the TA5000 into the existing network and noting at what point in the
network the connections will be made. The application process flows will need to take into
account additional information needed to be added to the new GUI to start the migration from
copper to GPON infrastructure.
Existing Gaps
For the migration of DS1 circuits that are the scope of this project, there are a few
existing gaps that need to be addressed. There is a need to address how changes in the legacy
provisioning applications will be made so that duplicate assignments to copper will not be made.
Another gap that will need to be addressed is that of how to make changes to customer circuits
once migrations have taken place. Today sales reps take change orders from customers but with
the first phase of the migration, which is the scope of this project, change orders will not be
possible due to migrations not reflected in billing application with the appropriate architecture
flags. In today's application process flows, architecture flags direct how applications will handle
the provisioning of circuits and services. Without and interface between existing GPON
provisioning and billing applications, changes will never be possible.

Project Development and Implementation
This section will serve to discuss how the DS1 migration project for customers with
chronic issues will be developed, tested, and implemented:
Project Plan
Scope.
The scope of this capstone will encompass the migration of DS1 circuits on copper
networks that have experienced multiple trouble reports by consumers within the last year. They
will be termed 'chronics' as the customer is seeing chronic issues with the circuit. This will be
considered phase I of the overarching migration plan for DS1 circuits. What will not be covered
by this capstone is the migration of customers' DS1 circuits that are not having issues prior to
migration nor will the placing of new DS1 customers on the GPON network.
Assumptions.
Here it must be assumed that there is an existence of a GPON residential network already
in place. It is this network that will be leveraged to migrate copper DS1 circuits. GPON
networks have become ubiquitous as telecommunication providers move from BPON to GPON
networks as fiber optic technologies advance.
Another assumption is that there is resource bandwidth in the form of personnel to
support the development, testing, and training for a new migration process. These resources will
be required to solve and streamline processes as they are implemented throughout the technology
development life cycle.

Pr oject phases
This project will follow a standard waterfall project development life cycle. This life
cycle will be broken down into the phases of Planning, Network Creation, Development, Testing,
and Delivery/Implementation
 Planning
 Requirements Gathering
 Network Creation
 Addition of TA5000 to GPON Networks
 Development
 Chronic Migration GUI Development/Creation
 Testing
 Chronic Migration GUI End to End testing
 Delivery/Implementation
 Chronic Migration GUI promoted to Production Environment
 Chronic Migration GA
Timelines.
 Requirements Gathering
 Begin 01/27/2014 - End 01/31/2014
 Chronic Migration GUI Development/Creation
 Begin 01/31/2014 - End 02/21/2014
 Chronic Migration GUI End to End testing
 Begin 02/21/2014 - End 03/07/2014
 Engineer/User Training (Runs concurrently with End to End Testing)
 Begin 02/21/2014 - End 03/07/2014

 Addition of TA5000 to GPON Infrastructure (Runs concurrently with other tasks starting with
Development)
 Begin 01/31/2014 - End 03/07/2014
 Production Delivery Date 03/09/2014
 Chronic Migration FOA
 Begin 03/10/2014 - End 03/21/2014
 Begin 03/22/2014
Dependencies.
With the exception of the task “Addition of the TA5000 to GPON Infrastructure” and
“Engineer/User Training” each task is dependent on the previous task. Requirements for
migration data and user needs must be gathered prior to GUI development and creation. The
GUI must be created prior to End to End Testing. Before the promotion of the migration
functionality to production, End to End Testing must complete successfully and in the same vein
the migration FOA and GA must follow in succession. The addition of the TA5000 to the GPON
infrastructure can run concurrently with tasks post planning and prior to production deployment.
Engineer/User training can happen during End to End testing as these tasks can be leveraged to
add user resources to testing while gaining experience with the new processes.
Resour ce Requirements
No new hardware or software resources will be needed except during the 'Addition of
TA5000 to GPON Networks' task. This task will necessitate the acquisition of a TA5000 and
cabling required to connect to the GPON infrastructure. There will also be a need for several

personnel resources. Active participation and engagement from the following groups will be
required for success:
 Project Management
 Application Developers
 System Testers
 Requirements Writers
 Production Testers
 Production Support Group
 Network Engineers
 Network Administrators
 Central Office Technicians
 Users
Risk Factors
As discussed previously, the major risk associated with a successful implementation will
be the lack of familiarity with the new Adtran TA5000 in the User, Application Development,
and Testing communities. This unfamiliarity could lead to missed requirements or underutilized
functionalities. Unforeseen issues are expected due to the unfamiliarity and to mitigate impact to
project time-lines additional testing and development hours have been built into the project
resource costs. This will allow additional resources to be brought on board to care for any issues
that arise.
Important Milestones
There are several key milestones that must be completed in order consider the project a success
and will be used to track metrics against.
 Requirements Completion

 Chronic Migration GUI Development/Creation Completion
 Chronic Migration GUI End to End testing Completion
 Engineer/User Training

Deliverable s
Each milestone in the project time-line will have a distinct deliverable that must be met
before moving to the next task with the exception of the two non-dependent tasks noted earlier.
 Requirements Completion
 Deliverable: Process and network documentation approved by all stakeholders including IT
as well as test case creation.
 Chronic Migration GUI Development/Creation Completion
 Deliverable: Migration GUI coded and aligned to process documentation Sign-off based on
unit testing metrics.
 Chronic Migration GUI End to End testing Completion
 Deliverable: Sign-off of quality based on execution of agreed to test cases.
 Engineer/User Training
 Deliverable: Individual completion of each users and engineer that will participate in the
migration process in production.
 Deliverable: The actual addition and activation of the TA5000 to the first Central Office to
participate in the project.
 Deliverable: Successful promotion of code to the production environment including
regression testing of existing code base.
 Deliverable: Migration of 80 circuits must be completed before exiting FOA.
 Deliverable: None. Project considered completed.

Project Development
This project was developed using an adjusted Waterfall Software Development Life
Cycle method. While an agile methodology has become trendy in the telecommunications
industry as of late, the strengths of the Waterfall method allow for more detailed inputs that are
needed for the new migration GUI to align properly with the existing provisioning applications
(SDLC, 2014). Another strength that will prove successful with this project is the ability to
monitor the steps in the Waterfall process which is needed for complex project such as this.
Implementation Plan
Strategy for the implementation
One alternative to the phased process of migrating DS1 circuits from a copper network to
a GPON infrastructure starting with customers having chronic issues is to start placing new DS1
customers on to GPON infrastructure. The provider could then circle back to existing customers
at a later undefined date. While this strategy might stop new customers from being placed on
failing copper, it will leave current customers fighting chronic issues. This could lead to churn
sending customers to the competitors (Trost, 2008).
Another possible solution is to deliver all migration and new customer functionality at
once. This would allow for customers with chronic issues to have their service moved to GPON
infrastructure as well as have new customers placed on to the fiber network once the project is
delivered to production. This solution would be extensive and have complicated functionality to
deliver at once and would require much longer time-lines. It would require additional resource
outlays in terms of personnel. Another negative is that the learning curve for all of the
stakeholders involved would be much greater leading to a lower quality of functionality overall.

The possibility of churn and lower quality functionality are the big reasons the strategy of
beginning the migration of customers' circuits with chronic issues is the best over all for the
business needs. New customers could still be placed on copper until later phases of the project
not covered by this project. However if they experience any issues the scope delivered in this
project would care for their resolution.
Phases of the roll out
After the requirements are gathered, each phase of the roll out will culminate in testing
that will be used to mark the phase milestone as successful. The Chronic Migration GUI
Development/Creation phase will be passed upon successful unit testing in a test environment.
This unit testing will include verifying the presence of appropriate entry fields in the migration
GUI. In the Chronic Migration GUI End to End Testing phase, the Systems test resources will
verify that applications are communicating and that the correct information is being passed.
Next End to End testing will be completed by sending orders from the new Migration GUI end to
end flowing from each provisioning application to the next application in the process flow until
the circuit is migrated correctly. Once all testing scenarios are completed successfully the GUI
will be migrated to the production environment. Upon delivery to the production, the FOA will
begin and run until 80 live customer migrations complete successfully with minimal issues
finally culminating in a production GA (General Acceptance).
Details of the project launch
Once the project enters into the GA mode it will be considered implemented. This will
mean migrations are happening smoothly in the production environment and no additional
changes or adjustments are needed to the current scope. Additional phases of the project will
continue through the same process through to a GA or if executive management should deem it is
not profitable to continue, phases will stop.

Dependencies
Whether implementing the solution in the test environment or deploying into the
production environment, there is one piece of functionality that must be present. That
functionality is the GUI to start the migrations. Without this GUI in the test environment, no
loopback testing could take place prior to the TA5000 being added to the live test network setup.
In production the GUI must be available to kick off any migrations from the copper to GPON
infrastructure. One dependency that is present in live production and not in the test environment
is that the TA5000 must also be present for migrations to take place in production. The TA5000
bridges legacy and next generation networks and must be in place for migrations to be successful
and for customer circuits to transmit data. As mentioned the GUI can still be verified in the test
environment without the presence of the TA5000.
It needs to be noted here that multiple milestones must be completed prior to the actual
delivery of the migration GUI to the test environment. The first dependency is that requirements
for the GUI must be completed. Similarly the development of the GUI from the gathered
requirements must take place. The dependencies must be completed in order to move forward
with the project.
Deliverables
Several deliverables must be met for the completion of a successful project. The first
tangible deliverable will be the completed requirements documents that must be handed over to
the development team. The second tangible deliverable will be that of the migration GUI
delivered by the application development team. The third tangible deliverable will be the
successful addition and activation of the TA5000 to the GPON infrastructure.
One intangible deliverable will also needed to be completed for a successful project
implementation and completion. The training of both the user groups that will be starting and

participating in the migration is that intangible. This training will make the copper to GPON
migrations smoother and aid in rebuilding the confidence of our customers who face chronic
issues with their current DS1 circuits on copper infrastructure as it will simulate what will be
seen in the field.
Training plan for users
The plan for training users will be two fold. First training by participating in the End to
End testing will allow users to understand the process in a low pressure environment and build
skills to employ during higher pressure production situations. This participation will let users
take notes and build an informal training manual that can be disseminated to peers. Next a
formal training document will be developed prior to migration functionality deployment into
production. These documents will be specific to the job function of those working on migrations
and delivered to each person accordingly.

Quality Assurance
As quality assurance is a vital aspect of the software development life cycle, it must be
defined clearly. In this section it will defined what the testing process will be, how it will be
evaluated, and the process through which it will be revised. However proper dissemination of
these results will drive how the project is perceived and how it moves forward. Dissemination of
these results will also be defined in this section.
Quality Assurance Approach
In order to facilitate a more cost effective quality assurance approach the testing team
will be working hand in hand with the User groups to test the new GUI developed as well as the
process implantation. This collaborative approach will help get the users real world experience
with the new GUI and migration process as well as bolster the resource availability to the system
test team.
The Quality Assurance approach implemented here will also leverage the user team to
create and verify the business needs for each test case created within the test plan. The test plan
will be created using the requirements documents created during the requirements gathering
phase. User input will help the System Test team understand the business drivers and priority of
each aspect of the test case.
Solution Testing
Quality assurance will have four phases within the software development life cycle of the
project. The first phase will be the development of a collaborative test plan. This will be done
with personnel from the Requirements, Development, System Test, and User groups. The second
phase will be that of development unit testing. This will take place as developers finish the
Chronic Migration GUI. Unit testing will not address any interface or flow through testing. The
third round will be that of Systems Integration Testing in a live test environment. Here Systems

Testers will ensure each interface can communicate properly with each other. Finally prior to
production delivery, System testers will work hand and hand with Users to test the migrations of
circuits with chronic issues from end to end utilizing live network elements to ensure flow-
though and activation of network elements work correctly prior to production .
Working with the User teams four different test scenarios were determined to be critical
to the DS1 migration project. These four test scenarios are:
Basic Migration - An engineer/user, upon responding to a trouble report, accesses the
new DS1 Copper to GPON Migration GUI, fills out the required fields, and submits the
appropriate customer and network information to start the migration order. Through existing
processes, the order flows to the provisioning applications where the OLT (optical line terminal),
GWR (Gateway Router), and TA5000 are activated. After successful activation, a field
technician is dispatched where an ONT (Optical Network Terminal) is placed at the customer
premises and activated. Once the dispatch is complete, the customer circuit is in service and the
migration of the customer's DS1 service from copper to GPON infrastructure is complete.
Changing Due Date - An engineer/user accesses the DS1 Copper to GPON Migration
GUI to adjust the customer service date of a pending DS1 migration order. Once the due date is
changed the migration follows the same path as the basic migration.
Canceling Migration - An engineer/user accesses the DS1 Copper to GPON Migration
GUI and cancels the pending work on a DS1 migration order. This means the customer will
remain on copper.
Disconnecting Migrated Circuit - An engineer/user accesses the DS1 Copper to GPON
Migration GUI to fill out and submit the appropriate customer and network information to take
the customer's DS1 circuit on GPON infrastructure out of service. This will result in the
customer having no service at all for the specific circuit.

Revisions
During the testing cycles, any issues or process gaps uncovered will be taken back to the
requirements team where stakeholders will discuss solutions to care for these issues. Any major
revisions will require buy-in and acceptance from all stakeholders. Minor changes such as new
xml tags or cosmetic changes to enhance look and feel do not need buy-in from all stakeholders.
These minor changes will only require buy-in from the User group.
Summative Evaluation Plan
Summative evaluation of the project will take place via testing through agreed upon test
plans for each phase of the testing process. Unit testing, SIT testing, and End to End testing will
each create metrics so that progress can be tracked. These metrics will track Pass, Failure, and
Pending test cases along with defect counts. This will aid project management to track
completion of milestones as well as direct resources to where the project is having the most
difficulty.
Disseminating Results
Dissemination of evaluation results will take place in two forms. The first is through
automated reporting of metrics and defects via HP Quality Center. This will let project
management see progress and hurdles in real time. Testing team leads will also send daily status
reports with an in depth reporting of progress made for the day. While these reports will carry
the testing metrics, it is imperative that a human feel for the daily progress is given to help
manage soft qualities of the stakeholders. These soft qualities include morale, understanding,
and engagement of all stakeholders involved within the project.

Post Implementation Support and Issues
The scope of this capstone is only the first phase of a comprehensive project to move all DS1
circuits to GPON infrastructure as well as adding new services to GPON infrastructure. It will
however need to be supported during the additional phases and after their completion. This
section will include what the post implementation support will maintain, who will maintain the
functionality, and if any additional changes are needed.
Post Implementation Support
The support plan going forward will need engagement from the user community. Manual
intervention will be needed for each migration to be started which will constitute this ongoing
user support post implementation. Additional network support as the project expands to new
geographical regions will be needed to add TA5000s to the GPON infrastructure. As TA5000s
reach capacity more network support will be needed to add to the infrastructure as well.
If code related issues are introduced in future releases, fixes for minor issues will be
provided in the next code release. Major showstopper issues will be addressed immediately by
means of a point release or via scripting. If scripting can be used, a code fix will be made in the
next available code release to production.
Post Implementation Support Resources
After the roll out is complete, users will be responsible for starting and completing
migrations. As well as everyday monitoring of the processes and systems. However any issues
falling outside of standard processes will fall to the production support teams consisting of
Database Administrators, Network Administrators, and Systems Experts. Each of these groups
have the authority to reach out to developers and system testers as needed for additional
expertise. This will allow for quick resolution to issues and will be provided by the existing
production teams supporting fiber networks within the telecommunication provider.

Maintenance Plan
The short-term maintenance plan relies on keeping the new TA5000 network element up
and running on the GPON infrastructure. The short-term will also need to ensure training plans
are updated with new information as processes are aligned with new roles in the production
environment. The long-term maintenance plan will be to ensure that training plans are kept up to
date as processes are changed. This long-term plan will also need to include capacity
management of the TA5000. Being proactive to capacity issues will aid the placement of new
TA5000s before capacity is reached and allow the provider to place them in or move them to
areas as needed.

Conclusion, Outcomes, and Reflection
In this final section of the capstone project, is the discussion and summary of the project
and solution that was employed as well as the project deliverables and overall outcome.
Project Summary
The intent of this project was to develop a process for migrating customers with chronic
issues on DS1 on copper infrastructure to GPON infrastructure. Aging and failing copper
infrastructure leads to ever increasing costs for repair and maintenance. This migration from
copper to GPON infrastructure would lead to reduced maintenance and resource costs over time.
If left undone, telecommunication providers would continue to shed customers due to poor
reliability and availability of the copper networks. The necessity of a process and GUI to be
developed and tested was the crux of this project.
Deliverables
Deliverables submitted for this project include the collaborative end to end test plan, cost
analysis for the roll out for the initial Central Office, and project time-lines. These deliverables
support the decision to use a phased approach to the migration of DS1 circuits from copper to
GPON infrastructure.
Outcomes
This project was actually implemented for however cost projects were made by
independent research. The strategy used for the quality assurance was developed by the writer of
this capstone and gained much support throughout the business and users communities. One
major problem that came about during the FOA was that of a jitter buffer under run. This caused
quality issues taking the customer out of service. It was discovered that the issue could only be
found by sustained activity for months at a time and not something that would have been feasible
to execute during the testing window. The jitter buffer under run issue was determined to be in

the vendor hardware/firmware itself and not in any software developed or implemented in the
scope of this project.
As how I feel about the work accomplished here, I am more than satisfied with the way I
was able to work and negotiate with user and business groups to deliver a successful project.
Since implementation of the project this year I have won three awards for the strategy I
employed to bring user resources into End to End System testing to shore up testing resources,
enable earlier training, and acclimate users to the new processes developed. Work on this project
and the subsequent phases have really been a bright point in my three years with the company.
Reflection
The most important lesson I took away from this project is how to bring together and lead
teams from across disparate IT and business groups. Here I found to actually lead does not take
a title or formal recognition of the leadership from executives teams. It takes the ability to listen
and hear team-members and then make them feel as they are important to the process. I also
learned more about the DS1 over GPON product offering than I had ever dreamed I would know,
becoming the subject matter expert within multiple organizations.

References
Adtran Total Access 5000 DS1 32 Port Gateway Module 1187800L1. (n.d.). Retrieved December
2, 2014, from
http://refurbphoneexchange.com/products/1187800l1?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=go
oglepla&variant=289754678&gclid=CKeG6tPqpcICFQgDaQodjXEAtg
Business Class Services over a GPON Network. (n.d.). Retrieved December 2, 2014.
http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/TEL/fnc/whitepapers/BusinessClass-GPON.pdf
DS1 Line Module Total Access 5000 DS1 Line Module. (2006, October 1). Retrieved December
2, 2014, from
http://www.adtran.com/pub/Library/Data_Sheets/Default_Public/Total_Access_5000_DS
1_Line_Module.pdf
Liu, S. (2012, August 12). NBN to save up to AU$700m in copper maintenance costs | ZDNet.
Retrieved November 12, 2014, from http://www.zdnet.com/au/nbn-to-save-up-to-
au700m-in-copper-maintenance-costs-7000002846/
SDLC | Waterfall Model. (n.d.). Retrieved December 4, 2014, from http://www.waterfall-
model.com/sdlc/
Trost, J. (2008, November 14). An Overview of GPON in the Access Network. Retrieved
November 24, 2014, from hhttp://www.pitt.edu/~dtipper/2011/Slides10.pdf

Appendix A:
Glossary of Terms Used
B
BPON
Broadband Passive Optical Network
C
Chronics
A customer circuit that has three or more issues within a year time frame.
Copper
Legacy network media truly comprised of copper wire.
D
DS1
Digital Signal 1. Standard of business data service. Traditionally 24 channeled DS0
circuits. Approximately equal to a TLS.
E
End to End Testing
Testing functionality from the point of order origination through activation of service to
completion of the order. This means hitting ever facet of the order provisioning process.
F
FOA
First Office Application
G
GA
General Acceptance

GPON
Gigabit Passive Optical Network. Fiber Network Architecture
L
Loopback
Testing methodology when systems or network elements are not available. A
simulated response is given so that testing downstream can continue
Live
When all applications and network elements are available and working together. Can
also be used to mean a production or production-like environment
O
ONT
Optical Network Terminal. Demarcation point on the customer premises
S
SIT
System s Integration Testing
T
TA5000
Piece of equipment that joins legacy and next generation networks
TLS
Standard of business data service at 1,544,000 bits per second
W
war-rooms
a group of experienced individual gathered together to support issues/crises in real-time
in support of live customers

Capstone - Benjamin Wright

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