Sat phones

Wed Sep 23 04:32:56 UTC 1998

ryan Wann <bwann at cwis.net> writes:
>Maybe we should have these one-call utility line/main marking services
>cross-reference who's fiber they're tagging, and give the respective
>carriers a heads-up warning before actual excavating begins... :)

The story told by the sales people is each carrier has people which
check their fiber routes every day.  The underground utility marking
services are supposed to complete their marking at least 24 hours
before the excavation work is scheduled to begin.  Thus giving time
for the carrier people who supposedly check their rights of way
every day fair notice.  They say this with a straight face, so I
guess they believe themselves.

In practice, I would expect excavators careful enough to have all
the underground utilities marked ahead of time, are also careful
during their digging.  The problems seem to come from diggers which
don't bother to get things marked before digging.  Not to mention
trains, gophers, floods, sharks, and even lightning strikes which
will never call before chewing up a right of way.  In other words,
fiber cuts may be reduced, but never eliminated.  Network designers
(and managers) must decide what frequency of outages and mean time to
repair are acceptable, and plan accordingly.  Is N:N, N:1 or N:0
redundancy ok?  I know the answer for my network, I don't know the
answer for your network.
-- 
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
  Affiliation given for identification not representation