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University Taps Sewers for Internet Access
Stony Stevenson writes "A web connection via the toilet bowl may sound like Google's most recent April Fool, but the University of Aberdeen plans to welcome students back with a high bandwidth internet network connected via the sewers.
The university tapped H2O Networks to provide a high capacity link for the next 10 years, enabling students to access the internet from their halls of residence. H2O Networks is a deploying dark fibre in the UK's waste water network to enable connectivity to those who have limited access. The network is known as 'fibre via the sewer'."
Proof that the internet really is just a bunch of shit being pushed through series of tubes...
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to the term "shitty connection". **rimshot**
The network is known as 'fibre via the sewer'."
How unimaginative. I propose the alternate "PUTP" (Pipe up the Pooper).
Oh, great, my flatmate is in the bog flushing his DNS. Anyone got a match?
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I'm pretty sure I deployed some "Dark Fiber" this morning when I got my coffee and cigarette.
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Chicago has an underground network of freight tunnels (below the loop and even the subways) that have been turned basically into a bunch of paths for conduits... There are some pics of people going into the tunnels here and you can see the conduits above them as they walk around.
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With all that fiber, I wonder if they try to keep logs
You'd think they might deploy fiber-optic cables and actually use them instead of letting them remain dark. I hear you get better throughput and higher bandwidth that way.
I have to PPP.
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It's dark fiber until it's lit. Putting cables into pipes has been around for 20+ years. Williams did it in natural gas pipes (and farmers sued them when they repurposed their easements illegally).
What this is, is a magnet for silly replies. Welcome to Monday morning.
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That there won't be any meaningful conversation on this topic and its technological implications but rather page after page of really...shitty...puns.
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The point is, sewer pipes are really big and they connect literally every building in any community where there is a city sewer system. If I'm going to run fiber and I don't want to spend a whole lot of time digging up the ground to bury lines and more importantly make them easily accessible for maintenance/upgrade, then the sewer (despite its obvious drawbacks) makes a pretty good place to put them. The problem I can see with this, that unless they plane to lock down all the sewer caps and manhole covers, it would be pretty easy to hack into the lines at some point; perhaps I'm mistaken.
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But now how are they ever going to close the anal log hole?
I'm amazed that they sussed this out. I mean, everybody knows how to send the numbers 1 and 2 through the sewer pipes. But... how do you send a 0?!
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That's a nice, easy way to wire a campus wide network. The tech has been here for a while, the toughest part was designing a cleanout cover that wouldn't leak and allow for access without taking the network down to use it. They use industrial strength R/C cars to run pullstrings through the pipes.
However, the problem they can't solve is that in the US, the town water authority would be in direct competition with a private company, a big no-no. The existing players would raise hell if it were tried in a community on more than a point to point basis (and even that would get a lot of attention). I would imagine similar outrage in the UK. However, since it is a campus network they can basically do whatever they want.
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I think this is fairly common in Universities that have a stand-alone campus (as opposed to one inter-mixed in a city environment).
t
My alma mater has an extensive system of steam tunnels(*) that run throughout the huge campus. These have been used for communications links for a long time. When I was there, we had an FDDI ring running to major buildings for a high speed backbone. I'm sure they've continued to upgrade the equipment on that fiber through the years. Having your own fiber offers a lot of interesting possibilities for great interconnect speed, and distributed services or data center decentralization.
(*) The MSU steam tunnels are the source of the Dungeons and Dragons tunnel games folklore, because of an incident with a disturbed child prodigy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_tunnel_inciden
I mean, it removes a lot of the incentive to sniff the network, doesn't it?
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Real crap, meet virtual crap...
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As someone who works for a water and sewer utility, I have to say this isn't such a crazy idea. HOWEVER, they need to consider a very disgusting reality: Grease buildup. We routinely jet-rod the sewer pipes to scour out the grease buildups.
If we do not do this, we risk having a storm flow do it for us. The grease coagulates and can form a blockage in the sewer mains. I've been at a large wastewater pumping station during a storm and these grease balls trap sewage, causing sewage overflows, despite an otherwise properly running pumping station.
What does bearing does this have with a network cable through the sewers? Well, it better be VERY tough and resilient to grease buildup. The force of jet rodding the pipe could easily break the cable unless it's been designed for this sort of abuse.
Oh, and by the way, if you haven't already learned this, DO NOT POUR GREASE OR FAT DOWN THE DRAIN! The stuff I'm talking about is the irreducible, routine buildup. The less of it you send down the drain, the less likely it will be that you'll have a backup flood your basement with it.
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