Outside plant protection, fiber cuts, interwebz down oh noes!

Fri Apr 10 05:22:41 UTC 2009

Ravi Pina wrote:
>
> That said one would *hope* vault access
> is not trivial and there are mechanisms in place to alert of
> unauthorized, unlawful entry. 

I regularly drove on these roads when these lines were being put in 
up-and-down the SF Peninsula.  There are 4 manhole covers every 1/4 mile 
or so that provide access to this fiber.  Do the math.  Multiply by the 
number of miles of fiber runs across the world, and the number of access 
points per mile on each run.  Exactly how do you plan to make "vault 
access non-trivial" and yet make the access as easy as it needs to be 
for routine maintenance and repair? 

My guess is that it is probably less expensive in the long run to leave 
them unprotected and just fix the problems when they occur than to try 
to "secure" the vaults and deal with the costs and extended outage 
delays when access it "secured" and it takes longer to get into a vault 
to fix things.

jc