[ixpmanager] North American Feature request CFA / LOA Field

[Barry O'Donovan]

Hi Paul,

> Here in the US we typically assign a CFA to a customer for a fiber or
> copper port rather the European standard where a colo provider just
> drops a pair into a cage.

Nah, in Europe the data centres assign IDs to cross connects also.

> Would it be possible to add a field to the physical port that allows for
> a freeform text of say 6 chars to hold that info.  It should not be null
> and unique per location.  It would also be create to create a letter of
> authorization to the Customer with that info on it.

You're free to fork IXP Manager and add such a field yourself if you're 
in a hurry. In cases were such additions are more globally useful, we'll 
happily consider a pull request. However, on this topic:

We have plans for a more generic and more useful patch panel management 
system within IXP Manager. Nothing too fancy - just a means to record 
these in a more systematic way. Data centres no longer just drop pairs 
into a cage/rack anymore - you typically need structured cabling from a 
patch panel in your rack to the data centre MMR (meet me room).

It's those ports that then connect to the IXP switches and it's those we 
want to track. I.e. in terms of each patch panel port, we want to know:

  - connected to what member
  - colo cross connect id
  - order date
  - connected to what switch port on our end

We also want to maintain this history when these are reassigned.


This is a work in progress.

  - Barry