Gunplay blamed for Internet slowdown ( fiber optic cables shot with guns)

Network World ^ | August 20, 2007 | Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

[Disambiguator]

The perps were seen escaping in this:

[Still Thinking]

I don’t get your tagline. Is it a reference to the Dan Rather “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” incident?

[300magnum]

Here in South Texas we have lost more than one fiber due to Dove/Quail Hunters. We have installed a triple shielded fiber that may do the trick. But I doubt it.

That's what I was thinking. Some youngster/youngsters bringing in dove season early.

[Syntyr]

“I have always been fascinated trying to figure out just how they splice two lengths of fiber-optic cable together and make all those tiny connections work.”

It can be a pain in the keister!

It has gotten much beter but not too long ago it could take an hour to glue, polish and TDR test a single fiber. Of course the more you do it the quicker you get. Now days they have kits that make it much quicker.

We were installing a bunch of multimode (24 fiber) runs about a kilometer of length. The vendor was spooling it off and laid it across what was supposed to be abandonded railroad siding...

An train engine came along and cut the fiber in about 6 places. The vendor was PO’d. At that time Fiber was EXPENSIVE...

[Still Thinking]

Oh, and some Al Gore thrown in too. I love it!

[Syntyr]

Backhoes Interuptus...

[Just another Joe]

How many other people besides you and me have seen “Outland”?

I've seen it but it wasn't his most memorable.

[bikerMD]

I guess TeliaSonera has never heard of SONET rings? More likely they made a decision to go cheap. All that self-healing fiber-optic ring stuff costs money.

[Andonius_99]

I’ve seen it done before. Basically, there’s a little machine that lines up the two ends of the fiber and then literally melts the two ends together. The amazing thing about it is the junction between the two fibers is nearly lossless after the “weld”.

[kenth]

Well, great, now they know they can disrupt information flow. I wondered what the cause of the overall slowdown was, since many sites were at a crawl, but I had no direct ISP problems.

[vladimir998]

Terrorists are taking notes, I’m sure.

[TChris]

Telia and Cogent, being very cheap wholesale bandwidth providers, did not spend the cash to have a backup, alternate route; and were thus caught out by this problem.

This is a travesty, IMO. The whole intent of the Internet, at its inception, was to provide redundant, robust data services in the event of major conflict (read: Nulcear War).

Alternate routing should be industry standard, IMO.

[VOA]

“”Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable,” said
Anders Olausson, a TeliaSonera spokesman. “

Hmm...maybe a Jihadi has come from his tour of duty in Iraq.
And after seeing how this Jihadi brothers have mucked up the petroleum
and electrical power grids with sabotage...
decided to see if a simple slege-hammer (non-tech) method could be used
to disrupt US infrastructure.

Yeah, I know that’s far-fetched.
But a lot of things sound less far-fetched after the morning of 9-11-2001.

[DBrow]

Microwave towers and tall TV antennas get shot up too. Put a big enough ding in a waveguide and they don’t wave too good no more.

The world is not bozoproof, unfortunately.

[Lurker]

How many other people besides you and me have seen “Outland”?

You mean Sean Connerys version of High Noon?

Great flick.

L

[SpaceBar]

Kara in “Spock’s Brain” was played by Marj Dusay. Lee Meriwether played Losira in “That Which Survives”.

[Still Thinking]

The world is not bozoproof, unfortunately.

Try to make something foolproof and the universe just starts supplying a better grade of fools.

[Bigg Red]

Maybe this is the real reason Rove retired. He and Cheney are out shootin’ up fiber optic cables.

[bikerMD]

have always been fascinated trying to figure out just how they splice two lengths of fiber-optic cable together and make all those tiny connections work.

It's magic.

[Still Thinking]

Not just magic, but FM.