Multi-position circuits

[alehaa]

Has anyone tried to model infrastructure with more than one position (e.g. multi-fiber cable)? I can't find a good way to do this with NetBox out of the box.

Example:

• We have two sites.
• Both are connected to a central hub operated by someone else using cables with 96 positions each. The cables are also owned by the hub operator.
• 12 positions are interconnected between the two cables at the hub, others go to our ISP, other peers, etc.
• It's convenient to know which port goes where at a site, so I added a patch panel as a device, using front and rear ports. However, since only one cable leaves the building, I've mapped all the front ports to a single rear port with 96 positions and connected it to a circuit termination.

This leaves me with the problem that I can only connect the entire circuit to another circuit or network. To interconnect only a few positions, my best guess was to add a dummy device on both circuit terminations at the hub location. However, this requires me to also add a Site for the central hub (not owned by us), etc. Has anyone found a good way to model this without making it too complex?

[jsenecal]

I usually split the "Circuit" by fiber pairs or ranges of fibers and connect them accordingly to the rear-ports of the patch panel.

This is also somewhat related to #13086 which is not exactly for the same outcome and usecase but could "fix" your case as well by allowing "child circuits"

[alehaa]

I‘ not sure whether this solves my issue. The circuit is not virtual, it just has positions like rear ports have already. So a Circuit might neer to have or understand positions, too. Fot interconnection, circuits would need to be connected directly and maybe just subsets of the positions. I‘ll give it a thought and maybe submit a FR.