Disclosed embodiments include a small form-factor pluggable (SFP) optical transceiver having optical time domain reflectometer functionality. A monitor processor is included in the transceiver to report link status and failure information to a cloud-based monitoring application. When a fiber optic link is established, the monitor processor remains idle to reduce power consumption by the transceiver. Upon failure of the link, the monitor processor sends a failure report to the monitoring application which can use the data to alert operators to presence and location of optical fiber breaks in the network.