US hunters shoot down Google fibre

Tue Sep 21 15:29:17 UTC 2010

Hunters, backhoes, and ship anchors are all fiber's natural enemies - 
I'm surprised Discovery Channel hasn't done a special on it!

On 9/21/10 6:19 AM, Christopher Morrow wrote:
> this was presented at the nanog in ... SF I think as well:
> <http://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog49/abstracts.php?pt=MTU5NSZuYW5vZzQ5&nm=nanog49>
>
> not really news...
>
> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 6:04 AM, Eugen Leitl<eugen at leitl.org>  wrote:
>>
>> http://www.itnews.com.au/News/232831,us-hunters-shoot-down-google-fibre.aspx
>>
>> Repairers forced to ski in to Oregon back woods.
>>
>> Google has revealed that aerial fibre links to its data centre in Oregon were
>> "regularly" shot down by hunters, forcing the company to put its cables
>> underground.
>>
>> The search and advertising giant's network engineering manager Vijay Gill
>> told the AusNOG conference in Sydney last week that people were trying to hit
>> insulators on electricity distribution poles.
>>
>> The poles also hosted aerially-deployed fibre connected to Google's $US600
>> million ($A635 million) data centre in the Dalles, a small city on the
>> Columbia River in the US state of Oregon.
>>
>> "What people do for sport or because they're bored, they try to shoot at the
>> insulators," Gill said.
>>
>> "I have yet to see them actually hit the insulator, but they regularly shoot
>> down the fibre.
>>
>> "Every November when hunting season starts invariably we know that the fibre
>> will be shot down, so much so that we are now building an underground path
>> [for it]."
>>
>> Gill said that on one occasion, a snowstorm and avalanche prevented Google
>> from transporting repairers and gear into the area of the cut.
>>
>> It usually used a helicopter or a Caterpillar D9 tractor for transport. It
>> improvised by sending three technicians on skis to "repair the fibre that got
>> shot down".
>>
>> "These guys had to cross country ski for three days," Gill said.
>>
>> "[One guy] is carrying what is known as a fusion splicing kit on his
>> backpack."
>>
>> He joked: "These guys had to go in and fix the fibre while facing gunshots
>>
>> "So [the] internet... [it's] more dangerous than you realise."
>>
>>