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Massive Fiber Cut Slows Net
netpuppy writes "East coast to west coast connectivity (or the other way around) feeling slow today? Here's why. It appears that the attack of the raging backhoes has hit Ohio today, where an unnamed public utility managed to cut through 4 OC-192 circuits while working on gas lines. 4 OC-192s are roughly equivalent to 40 Gbps traffic, and trunks this size usually carry both voice and data on them. AboveNet, GTE, and Metro Fiber (now part of Worldcom) seem to be the worst hit, according to this Inter@ctive Week article. " OK, I'm not just crazy. It has been slower then molasses today.
if fibre lines were marked the same way gas lines are marked in cities. hmmm....
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I think if the day after a nuclear exchange you're worried about whether or not you're going to be able to read your email, then today's society's priorities are more than slightly skewed.
If you are interested in this stuff, look at The history of the Internet for fuller details. But the basic story is that the idea of packet-based networks arose independently in two places. The first was Kleinrock et al at MIT, the second was Baran at RAND. The former group was interested in them as a way of efficiently sharing the same lines between many different computers. The latter was interested in them for creating communication systems that could survive nuclear war. The two groups did not know of each other.
The Internet arose out of ARPANET which was based on the work at MIT. The goal was to allow computer resources at different research institutions with different types of computers to be shared. The fact that surviving nuclear war was not a goal can be seen in the fact that the machinery used to set it up had no protection against the electro-magnetic effects of a nuclear warhead. Furthermore the initial set-up heavily relied upon a single back-bone. With no redundancy in your physical network, what good is a redundant protocol?
In fact the initial proof of concept and then proposal for ARPANET was made before the MIT people even heard of the work at RAND. Indeed the two groups found out about each other at a conference where the ARPANET was being proposed. Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself!
Cheers,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Why is it that IP trunks seem to be backhoed at the drop of a hat, while phone lines are somehow immune? Why doesn't the phone line between Boston and San Francisco go down?
:)
answer: phone lines are not immune. they get cut all the time. however, the phone network, like the internet, has redundancy. whe na phone line gets cut calls are rerouted to other trunks, making the problem oblivious to the layman.
so, why do fiber cuts turn out so much worse? because the data network is bursting at the seams. a voice line cut can be directed to ununsed lines. a data line cannot be done in the same manner, because there are no vacant lines, or at least not as many as were lost...
why is this the case? one, because the data network is expanding faster than new fiber can be laid down. we're too big for a britches. also, the phone network, which has grown at a decidedly slower pace, has, at both the users' and phone/data companies' requests, deemed to be more important. let's face it, if a phone line went down to a company hq, they'd be lost for as long as that line was down. just now are people realizing that their data line, is now becoming more important than their voice line.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
My company's T-1 line has been cut at least 3 times in the last 5 years.
This kind of thing could be a MAJOR problem as the internet becomes more important to big companies. I mean right now, sadly, it's still a novelty to many of the people in the world. But can you imagine the hell we'd be in for if everything travelled over the 'net and someone cut a big trunk like this? Yikes.
Werd.
I don't know about y'all, but our connection doesn't seem to be any slower here. That poor bastard with the backhoe is luck he didn't cut that line around these here parts. We'd have his hide! Hell, Billy Bob'd probably string him up! Imagine not being able to get on EBay to see if he won the auction for the entire video tape library of the Dukes of Hazard. The horror!
All opinions expressed with tongue firmly in cheek between the skoal and the ceegar.
Now we know that the "vehicle" in "multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle" (MIRV) is actually a backhoe, rather than a nuclear warhead. I bet the guys who designed the 'Net to be nuke-tolerant are feeling pretty damned embarrassed right about now.
Some people think the cold war was won by USA outspending USSR. But the real truth is that someone finally leaked that we were building bombs rather than just backhoes. Ivan's pants must have gotten pretty soiled at that revelation. Just think: all along, we totally misinterpreted what "We will bury you!" meant.
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Correct, but as the other poster mentions, it just gets re-routed. But stop and think for a minute.
... --- ...
Power grids and telephone circuits can be affected the same way, take out one of those big "power towers" that traverse large spans, and a couple of remote stations, a few satellite uplinks, some telco switching stations/relay towers, and havoc *will* ensue. It doesn't matter if it *can* be re-routed, the resultant chaos and downtimes would cost probably millions. Cyberwarfare isn't about information, it's about $$$$$ lost when the infrastructures disappear.
Then we'll be falling back to all the guys with their ham sets.
Blech. Signatures.
I work in London (England) and earlier today a colleague told me that he had tried pinging a site in the US. He claimed that the packets were making it across the pond OK and then were being routed via Australia. We didn't believe him. Guess that I'll have to apologise tomorrow.
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
HA! I was WONDERING why things were slow to my ISP today! Those OC192's are probably the ones that Columbia Gas has pipelines running alongside, on I80. (Ha! You thought I wouldn't name the gas company!) IIRC, ICG laid the first OC48, and MCI/MFS as well as Sprint laid more, and more, and more. They're doing a LOT of construction along I80 from what I hear, so it's NOT surprising that a cut occured. Those lines are on a gas-pipeline right-of-way, and there are 5ESS Demarcation points along I80 for 'em.
:)
There've been previous fiber cuts that resulted in me passing a group of 15 MCI/WorldCom vans on my way home. I betcha if it's the link I suspect, they've got the onramp *packed* with all their techs trying to explain to the people staffing the tollbooths that they're with (insert-company) and they're in on an emergency call and they'll be getting right back off! *LAUGH!* Gotta love the Ohio Turnpickle, eh?
-RISCy Business | Rabid unix guy, networking guru
your company here.
shelby != ford
The MIDS Internet Average shows the effect of the fibre cut in the context of the Internet as a whole.
Actually, although these cables may follow major access routes, Sprint initially created their fiber network along the right-of-way of the Southern Pacific Railroad, as it was originally formed by the SP. (Hence the SPR in SPRINT as a previous poster noted; INT is probably for internal or something). Considering the SP doesn't run to the east coast, they either use roads or some other railroads tracks. As for how do I get there, there are trucks with rail wheels. But, overlay a rail map on an interstate/US/State highway map some time. You're likely to find that many of the major intercity rail lines correspond quite closely to the major highways, especially those portions of the US highway system which was build, for the most part, alongside the rail lines. Where they separate, at least along Sprints network, I bet the fiber follows the rail and not the highway.
see, why the hell were these cables running through what was some chicken feed corn field in Ohio? Who is the idiot that didn't mark that there was a HUGE FRIGGIN' CORD underground that probably cost a small fortune? Oh, and how much is the replacement construction and infrastructure going to cost? Geez oh man. See, that's why I like Qwest. All their cords are along train track lines where they're the only ones that are allowed to dig and even if something is cut, they can just pull another cord through the piping.
So lets see, in the past month or so, we've had a problem with MCI WorldCom and UUNet (correct me if I'm wrong) and now some backwater public works moron who was probably driving the backhoe with the blade down on his way to a coffee break killing some serious piping. Hmmm... what if we have a cataclysmic earthquake that splits North America in two by 3 inches... what would happen? Would all of that fiber optic cable stretch or would it pop? hmmm...
The data networking companies don't seem to be as concerned about reliability and availability. There are too many single points of failure. I've heard stories about the lack of excess/spare capacity in some big IP networks. The recent MCI Worldcom frame relay network failure was unforgivable. Some people were cut off for a week.
You have to assume that lines will go out, equipment will fail and that software may not work properly.
Looks like /. is on the other side of the break from my location. This packet travelled all the way around the globe to get here. Anyway, there are only three possible companies responsible for this disaster. Cincinatti Gas and Electricity, Columbia Gas or East Ohio Gas. Each is equally likely, as Ohio has some sort of 'consumer choice' law that allows you to choose your provider (who is in turn responsible for your particular gas feed) My bet is on CG&E, as they seem to have the largest consumer base and the mose infrastructure under their control. When I figure out which one it is (I'm calling each now) /. .
I'll let you all know.. Let them feel the weight of
.sig: Now legally binding!
(And yes, I've done a bit of construction work myself...)
No Laughing Allowed!
Slighty off topic but a good tale: My father has been working for a national European broadcaster for a long time. Decades ago when they were setting up a new television and radio campus they had to run some data lines out to the techies' new buildings. He and his colleagues indicated the line where they wanted the backhoe to dig and went to lunch in the canteen. About 20 minutes later all the lights went out. Somebody had neglected to put down any markers and the backhoe had cut through the main power cable *after* where it was joined to the back-up generator. As national braodcasters in Europe also double as the goverment's Emergency Broadcast System this caused a lot of people way up the chain to get alarmed. While the cable was being repaired they had to bundle a crew down to the old emergency studio and transmitter in the General Post Office (Think Krusty the Clowns broadcast in The Simpsons).
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
There is now a thunder storm in that same area that the lines are down. The company that is fixing the lines has stated that a storm is keeping them from fixing the lines. They have no estimation of when it will be fixed.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
just for all you to know, themes.org is being hosted on abovenet (one of the severely affected isps) and i can't currently reach abovenet's dns servers.
sum: themes.org probably will be down until this is fixed. please be patient.
-- adraken
People fuck up. You can't arrest them all, or everyone on the planet would be in jail.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I work and play here at an Ohio university (Case Western Reserve if any of you care). Net access here is terrible. The fastest transfer I've managed has been a meager 120 kbps to anywhere in the world (considering we have OC-3 out, things are usually quite peppy).
I really wish it were possible to see an accurate weather report on how such things affect the rest of the 'net. It's difficult to interpolate results from very few data points. Of course, the feasibility of such a system is quite difficult and prone to error.
In either case, I'm advising everyone here to be nice to the 'net. There's no reason folks need to be downloading their pr0n, mp3z and off-site ftp installs of Linux during something like this. A little conservation can go a long way.
Actually, tcp/ip over ax.25 (ham radio data) is great; the 44.0.0.0/24 range is reserved only for amateur radio networks!
a m_Radio/ and take a look at the listed sites.
As soon as I have enough money, I'll be buying a second tnc (terminal mode controller, more or less a modem, with packet "stuff" added on), to connect to my handheld 2m/70cm radio, and my newton, so that I can do wireless internet from my hand (and much cheaper than a cellphone after a few months).
There are several great places to begin seeing what packet radio is all about, if anyone's interested you might drop by http://www.frostnet.advicom.net/chris/bookmarks/H
Gee. I don't recall anyone posting this kind of message about sysadmins.. I mean, how many of us have been paged or called at 3 AM to run in and reboot a server, router or something else. (And it's certainly not WORK that my PHB is doing at 3AM... :P )
-Chris
I am not sure if it is just me, but why aren't these things marked? I still remember a few months ago when slashdot was shut down for several hours because of the friendly construction worker deciding to have a little too much fun with the tractor. If it isn't power, it the phone line. One solution can be found in the summer issue of 2600. The article is on ground based networks and it does make for interesting reading.
I think we need a moderation category for "Beowulf Reference."
:)
The only thing I can't decide is if it should be +1 or -1.
The severed end of that fiber gives a whole new definition of piping output to /dev/null.
--- A Jesus Fish eating a Darwin Fish only proves Darwin's point.
About 8 years ago while working in Asia in a country to be left unamed (to protect the guilty). We had, had about 20 line cuts in a two week period. All within the same five mile stretch of Highway. It was because local farmers whereout backhoeing their field dikes to prepare for the next seasons planting as well as crews from Highway construction. We kept repairing the cuts in the fiber, putting larger and larger signs and underground tapes all in the local language (none of which helped they dug where they wanted too.) One of our local co-workers came up with a solution to the problem. We place signs along the stretch in ENGLISH only. The locals, and highway crews became so sure that this was some special secret government project that over the course of the next 6 months we had only one cut in our area of responsibility. *sigh* Kinda like my physics prof who said the only thing fibre optics would be good for is "hippy" lamps and nothing more.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
As someone who did construction for a couple of years, I can tell you that while you might think there are maps that can tell you where lines are, they are almost always wrong. I've seen clearly marked lines on a map that were more than 10 feet from where they were supposed to be when you get in the ground and start digging. If the original diggers used flags to mark the lines, that makes it a little easier but even then it's like looking for a needle in a haystack but the needle has a string around it. A little better but not much.
it was IDIOT proof. Just nuke proof.
ok, I worked at an isp for a while, and here's what I saw.
Apparently, people digging tend to call blue stakes or whoever when they are digging in areas that might have natural gas lines, 'cuz they'll explode if they screw up. Fiber lines, on the other hand, pose no such problem unless you're standing in water when you hit one (there's a lot of power going through to feed all the repeaters on a long-haul circuit). So utilities and construction workers don't tend to worry about calling any utilities to find out if fiber is buried, because they really never see the effects. I believe they are legally liable, though. Anyone know if someone has ever been brought to court for cutting fiber??
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
Good thing there wasn't anyone around there smoking a cigarette. What with all those loose bits sloshing around, the slightest spark could have set off that 'internet explosion' people keep telling me about.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
I would say that this goes to show the utter bullshit that is the whole cyber terrorism thing. Why spend billions of dollars trying to police imaginary squads of crackers set to destroy our information infrastructure, when a couple of idiots with shovels can create major mayhem like this?
I wonder what an organized group of wire cutters who did a little bit of research on their targets could accomplish. I have a feeling it wouldn't be pretty.
I can't say I noticed anything myself (the net has been dog slow for me as long as I can remember, so), but if a small event like this can cause major problems, then the Internet is definetly closing up on critical mass....
-
Well, the powering issue being talked about isn't exactly what would be called "common". Most fiber in the ground today has no current-carrying conductors. True, it has a metallic conductor or two in it, and in some cases, a metallic sheath or armour, but carries no exectricity. The metal conductor is used exclusively to locate the cable with inductive/RF location gear. When it comes to re-generation of fiber "signals", byt simple amplification, or a full teardown of the bitstream with drop/add functionality, it's usually done at a special location (in-ground vault, above ground fiber hut, whatever) with external power. That's power supplied by a power company, with backup power. Since fiber traffic routinely travels 50+km without intervention at all, it's a total waste of resources and cable to lay a power cable for equipment. Now, all said, there are exceptions where there is no power readily available, like deep-sea cables, deserts, and such where there may be a power cable present in places. But in general, not present. Now, back to a little more on topic :) As for location, depending on the area, this can be tricky business, big time. In dense metropolitan areas, there can quite literally be cables a foot or less apart "horizontally" as well as several layers deep "vertically". Location of cables isn't always as precise as it ought to be, especially when the phone companies records don't reflect actual construction oddities, like perhaps a four foot fiber "loop" at the base of a pedestal. Well, when the person locating cable gets within a couple feet of a pedestal, you'd just assume it goes right in, right? Wrong :) And another company plans to put a pedestal right next to the existing one, and, well, it's time to break out the Scotch-Lok or quick-fix fiber kit :) Granted, most cable and fiber cuts happen out of pure ignorance or stupidity. Farmer Joe is out in the field fixing a drainage tile with his tractor and doesn't give a single thought to what else may be in the ditch with his tile. Where did those kits go again? :) And as a final note on the buried cable thing, nowadays, it's becoming common, almost required, practice to bury a brightly colored plastic ribbon above the cable being installed. Usually yellow or orange, it's really easy to see against black dirt, and would hopefully be seen before the contractor hits the cable itself. Doesn't do much good in the case of boring or knifing cable in though. All of this is just general information. The cut out east could have been done in one of a dozen or more other common contractor cable goofs that I won't even try to speculate on. Either way, it boils down to this - contractor started digging without requesting a locate, or if the cable was properly located, and the contractor either mis-read the location markings, or ignored them, that contractor had better hope he has a good insurance company. If the cable was not located at all, and a locate request was made and recorded in a timely manner, usually 24 to 48 hours before digging, well it's the telco's tough luck. You know, it's a small wonder that things work as well as they do considering the unimaginable number of perils out there, backhoe's included :) Sorry this is so long! FBG the AC
But now the Internet is a commercial enterprise, and failure is now an option. At worst, some large corporations lose their VPNs and have to prioritize and pick up the phone again. For most of the net it's just a matter of losing porn, IRC, and MP3.
Now if you're a backbone maintainer, do you double your capital costs to achieve more than minimal redundancy just to give the public a warm fuzzy feeling? Or do you maintain the least expensive network you can without losing customers? Market forces will drive the QOS on the net to the lowest tolerable level, and for now people will tolerate a lot of net failure because their lives and livelihoods don't completely depend on it...yet.
Given, they have a tough job. So what, they get paid to work like dogs, they aren't a chain gang for crying out loud.
:-)
Around here, they put commercials on tv all the time saying, "before you dig, call Miss Utility" and flash an 800 number. So you mean all us yokels have to check in with the utility folks but the utility folks don't have to check themselves?
Sure accidents happen, but I can't see a public utility diggin around and not knowing where their own lines are. Sheesh.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Now, we can't count on the users cutting down on their bandwidth use conscientiously. How, then, can we keep the critical services running? For a start, we need to define "critical services". I'll say that the greater the ratio of content to bytes, the higher the priority of a service. The only practical way to filter packets by service is to filter by port. You can run a filtered service on any old port you want, but the goal is not to prohibit services so much as drastically reduce the bandwidth used so that the network remains usable.
DNS, for example, would have a very high priority, and be one of the last services to drop. Without DNS, the network becomes significantly less usable. The services designed for text communication also would have a high priority: smtp and the assorted email services (no attachments), nntp (again, no attachments), finger, time services, gopher, and the like. Even http might be allowed through, but filtered by mime type (text/plain, text/html, x-www-form-unencoded, etc.).
Still, there would be a significant drop in the usefulness of the network. We need more bandwidth than we need to ensure reliability. Make bandwidth, not war! :)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
We never had this problem back in the days of good ol' POTS service. Good old copper wire never cut cut or went dolkjsd;flkh#&&(
NO CARRIER
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Hmmm, they could always pack the fiber bundles inside of high explosives. Yeah, it's still get cut another time or two, but word would spread among the back-hoe operators REALLY quick to NOT mess with them fiber cables.
(Yes, I'm joking...)
Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away. -Rob Malda
Well - that would explain this:
:-(
1 198.182.167.17 (198.182.167.17) 0.628 ms 0.564 ms 0.532 ms
2 adsl-63-194-218-254.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (63.194.218.254) 26.688 ms 29.433 ms 15.868 ms
3 core1-fe4-1-0.snfc21.pbi.net (206.171.134.209) 13.394 ms 13.701 ms 15.957 ms
4 gsr1-g1-0.snfc21.pbi.net (209.232.130.20) 16.098 ms 13.846 ms 15.215 ms
5 sfra1sr3-so-1-1-1-0.ca.us.prserv.net (165.87.161.74) 16.676 ms 16.208 ms 15.202 ms
6 sfra1sr2-11-0-0.ca.us.prserv.net (165.87.13.17) 16.684 ms 16.286 ms 15.226 ms
7 above-advantis-ds3.sjc.above.net (216.200.0.81) 21.833 ms 24.418 ms 29.271 ms
8 core1-core4-oc3.sjc.above.net (216.200.0.85) 25.864 ms 23.882 ms 17.173 ms
9 core2-core1.sjc.above.net (209.133.31.110) 47.734 ms 39.032 ms 39.107 ms
10 main2-core2.sjc.above.net (207.126.96.138) 44.072 ms 40.088 ms 40.069 ms
11 core2-main2.sjc.above.net (207.126.96.137) 42.369 ms 44.488 ms 46.094 ms
12 * * core3-core2-oc3.iad.above.net (209.249.203.65) 590.011 ms
13 abov-core1-mae-east.netaxs.com (209.249.119.234) 695.855 ms 721.634 ms 848.819 ms
14 dn-netaxs-gw.dc-core.h5-0-45M.netaxs.net (207.106.127.94) 1125.874 ms 1282.923 ms 1408.877 ms
15 h900.ca2.wdc.dn.net (209.207.190.5) 1263.551 ms 1250.176 ms 1252.700 ms
16 209.207.174.23 (209.207.174.23) 1234.975 ms 1256.689 ms 1208.096 ms
and worse yet DNS lookups from here going thru Vienna
But remember folks there's redundancy in the backbone routing but when something big goes down
everyone else gets to suffer as the traffic
gets piled on top of their usual connections.
If there's a lot of traffic going thru Europe I
bet they're getting really steamed over there
When you are aware of the econonmic backlash from cutting through a fat pipe, adrenaline is the first thing that hits :-) Then you start worrying about your new career "would you like fries with that?". Then you leap up and go tearing around the building looking for the laser splicer kit.
:-)
:-]
Laser splicers are expensive, so they are kept in a locked cabinet. Fire axes are your friend, and handles come right off with the first few blows. Then a quick rush back to the site of the break. It was in the ingress vault, carrying a few dozen fibre cables to the head end equipment, so there isn't a lot of room to manoeuvre, and the closest electrical outlet is 2 extension cords away. Breaks never happen anyplace nice, like in a well lighted place with a table nearby. Breaks are always at the bottom of a sewage ditch, or in a crawlspace or under the ocean. Murphy has a law about this.
Time lost, about 7 minutes until repairs started. Time to repair is about 12 minutes, if you are good. 20 if your hands are shaking and the sweat is pouring off your brow.
The fat pipes, an OC-12 in this case, are actually very small mono-mode fibre optic threads, less than a millimetre in diameter. They are inside a thin plastic sheath, wrapped in some other protective materials, but those protective materials are stripped back inside of the vaults, so eejits can drop some heavy equipment on them, and slice them right through without any resistance at all.
To re-splice a fibre requires that the protective sheath be stripped back a few inches on either side of the break, then the fibre has to be cleaned with alcohol and other contaminant free cleaners so there are no impurities sitting on the outside of the fibre.
Then you have to put the ends into a cleaver, which looks like an old film splicer or a paper shear. The fibre has to have a nice clean break on the end, so the ends can be butted against each other before fusing with almost no loss of signal. Most backhoe induced breaks shear the fibre at a long angle, so you lose an inch or so. That is why there are always loops of extra fibre every so often, for slack.
Then you put the two ends into the fusion unit, which hold the ends together. Then you hit the button, and a powerful laser melts the ends slightly so they flow together, then cool into a new, not quite perfect optical path.
Then you have to re-cover the exposed fibre carefully with a new sheath, then wrap the splice with some more protective tape, and THEN you can wrap the whole area in duct (gaffers) tape
Then comes the paperwork to document the splice, the new losses introduced, the higher BER, etc.
And if you are lucky, nobody noticed the break since it was late on a saturday evening and only AOLers were affected for about 20 minutes. I love routers and backup routes.
the AC
[the names, places, dates have all been written in the third person so as to not identify the guilty party or service provider affected. No packets were hurt during the writing of this post. Stunt doubles were used for the dangerous cabinet opening scene
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Unless the lines were in some serious sheathing, most backhoes wouldn't even twitch going through it. If the operator wasn't watching the hole close (most tend to be more concerned about where the bucket's going) he'd probably never notice it.
As an aside, I once worked with a gentleman who could knock your hat off with the bucket of his hoe (I held still, most he tried it on wouldn't). I saw him pick up a boiled egg in the bucket without breaking the shell. That kind of trick requires a level of skill not equalled by most airplane pilots. Those machines are *not* that easy to operate, and idiots don't tend be allowed on them.
From Wired 4.12 ... article called Mother Earth Mother Board ... url at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.ht ml
The signal coming down the FLAG cable passes through the doped fiber and causes it to lase, i.e., the excited electrons drop back down to a lower energy level, emitting light that is coherent with the incoming signal - which is to say that it is an exact copy of the incoming signal, except more powerful.
The amplifiers need power - up to 10,000 volts DC, at 0.9 amperes. Since public 10,000-volt outlets are few and far between on the bottom of the ocean, this power must be delivered down the same cable that carries the fibers. The cable, therefore, consists of an inner core of four optical fibers, coated with plastic jackets of different colors so that the people at opposite ends can tell which is which, plus a thin copper wire that is used for test purposes. The total thickness of these elements taken together is comparable to a pencil lead; they are contained within a transparent plastic tube. Surrounding this tube is a sheath consisting of three steel segments designed so that they interlock and form a circular jacket. Around that is a layer of about 20 steel "strength wires" - each perhaps 2 mm in diameter - that wrap around the core in a steep helix. Around the strength wires goes a copper tube that serves as the conductor for the 10,000-volt power feed. Only one conductor is needed because the ocean serves as the ground wire. This tube also is watertight and so performs the additional function of protecting the cable's innards. It then is surrounded by polyethylene insulation to a total thickness of about an inch. To protect it from the rigors of shipment and laying, the entire cable is clothed in good old-fashioned tarred jute, although jute nowadays is made from plastic, not hemp.
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
I checked out the Internet traffic report to see what kind of effect this harmless mistake had. North American traffic statistics
Keen! Can you spot the time the big bad backhoe operator cut the cord?
Construction/Utility repair guys don't have an easy life. They're the ones out there in the middle of the night when your power line has gone down, or the ones fixing that broken sewer pipe, or the ones who make sure you have water. Near here they're doing major construction over on Grand Avenue, and to avoid traffic they have to do it in the middle of the night. They accidentally cut off a hunk of phone lines and about 1000 people had no phone service, but that happens pretty rarely.. I'd like to see YOU guys doing hard physical labor all night or all day trying to avoid speeding cars and a maze of pipes and cables and never screw up occasionally.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the slow connection rate that I get when I try and telnet into my webserver that sits in the next town over from where I work. After all, when I do a traceroute, I get shipped through machines in Chicago, SanDiego, and other exotic places. And I'm in South Carolina. A month or two ago, there was a slashjot about some guys trying to map the Internet. I think that it would be easier to map a world covered in spaghettti noodles, because that's what the Internet looks like to me!
Brad Johnson
Advisory Editor
Brad Johnson