A “Loss of Signal” (LOS) alarm is a critical alarm that indicates that there is no or very bad signal at the physical interface. LOS alarm is also raised when the signal level drops below the threshold, at which a high bit error rate (BER) is predicted. LOS alarm can be caused by physical damage, power outage, or misconfiguration of the equipment. LOS alarm can affect the service availability and performance of the optical network. Therefore, it is typically assigned a critical severity level, which means that it requires immediate attention and resolution2. Other severity levels are major, minor, and warning, which indicate different degrees of impact and urgency of the alarms. References: Troubleshooting Guide for Cisco NCS 1002, T1: A Survival Guide, M-series SONET/SDH alarms and troubleshooting tips