Background

One of the major projects that I undertook was to create a Cross Connect Simulator. The simulator was designed for a multitude of uses. First it was a great training tool since it simulated extremely expensive equipment. It was configurable so it allowed every combination to be tested while most labs were limited in its cost effective configurations.

It allowed a number of views that were simply not available in the real product. I was able to link the manuals to the simulator including the electronic schematics of components and even the network diagrams.

It served a real world purposes too. I could connect to a real cross connect anywhere in the world and download its database into the simulator. The database could then be repaired and uploaded into the live system. Previously the only ways to repair a database was to ship it back and forth to a specially configured system that duplicated the customer configuration or to delete the database and start entering cross connects.