Fiber cut in SF area

Tue Apr 14 01:34:13 UTC 2009

On Apr 13, 2009, at 8:31 PM, Peter Lothberg wrote:

>
> There are three solutions to the problem;
>
> 	A: Put a armed soldier every 150ft on the fiber path.
>
> 	B: Make the infrstructure so redundant that cutting things
> 	   just makes you tired, but nothing hapens.
>
> 	C: Do nothing.
>
>
> As the society becomes more and more dependent on the infrastructure
> for electronic communication, my suggestion to policy makers has been
> that it should be easier to imprison all the government officials of a
> contry than knocking out it's infrastrcture.

	I certainly think this trailer is the most insightful thought of the  
day.

	When you're looking for backup comms, is it just going to be the ham  
radio operators and am/fm radio stations left if there were some  
outage?  With tv having gone digital it's not possible to tune in and  
pick up the audio carrier anymore.  Wartime and times of civil unrest  
the first thing you do is take over communication to the citizens.   
Without your internet^Wpodcast of the news, how will you know what is  
going on?  If redundancy is sacrificed in the name of better quarterly  
earnings is it the right decision?

	this is not only interesting from a network operators perspective but  
from a governance perspective as well.  I've not done any ham radio  
stuff for ~15+ years but do keep a shortwave radio around (battery  
powered of course).

	The first thing to happen will be the network will be severed.  Look  
at what happened in Burma.  Both their internet links were turned off,  
and not just taking down BGP, but the circuits were unplugged.

	- jared