Fiber cut in SF area

Mon Apr 13 21:54:49 UTC 2009

On Mon, 13 Apr 2009, chris.ranch at nokia.com wrote:

> I get the feeling you haven't deployed or operated large networks.

  Nope.

> You never did say what the multiplier was.  How many miles or detection
> nodes there were.  Think millions.  The number that popped into my head
> when thinking of active detection measures for the physical network is
> $billions.

  It depends on where you want to deploy it and how many miles you want to
  protect.  I was thinking along the lines of $1.5 million for 1000 miles of
  tunnel, equipment only.  It assumes existing maintenance crews would
  replace sensors that break or go offline, and that those expenses already
  exist.

> All for a couple of minutes advanced notice of an outage?  Would it
> reduce the risk?  No.  Would it reduce the MTBF or MTTR?  No.  Of all
> outages, how often does this scenario (or one that would trigger your
> alarm) occur?  I'm sure it's down on the list.

  What if you had 5 minutes of advanced notice that something was happening
  in or near one of your Tunnels that served hundreds of thousands of people
  and businesses and critical infrastructure?  Could you get someone on site
  to stop it?  Maybe.  Is it worth it?  Maybe.

  Given my inexperience with large networks, maybe fiber cuts and outages
  due to vandals, backhoes and other physical disruptions are just what we
  hear about in the news, and that it isn't worth the expense to monitor for
  those outages.  If so, my idea seems kind of silly.

> SLA's account for force de majure (including sabotage), so I really doubt
> there will be any credits.  In fact, there will likely be an uptick on
> spending as those who really need nines build multi-provider multi-path
> diversity.  Here come the microwave towers!

  *laugh* Thank goodness for standardized GIS data. :-)

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Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
beckman at angryox.com                                 http://www.angryox.com/
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