Fiber cut - response in seconds?

Tue Jun 2 17:21:19 UTC 2009

> No. And here's why: If you're a naughty foreign intelligence team, and
> you know your stuff, you already know where some of the cables you'd
> really like a tap on are buried. When you hear of a construction
> project
> that might damage one, you set up your innocuous white panel truck
> somewhere else, near a suitable manhole. When the construction guy with
> a backhoe chops the cable (and you may well slip him some money to do
> so), *then* you put your tap in, elsewhere, with your actions covered
> by
> the downtime at the construction site. That's why the guys in the SUVs
> are in such a hurry, because they want to close the window of time in
> which someone can be tapping the cable elsewhere.
> 
> At least that's what I heard. I read it somewhere on the internet.
> Definitely. Not at all a sneaky person. No sir.

And if you were a naughty foreign intelligence team installing a tap, or a bend, or whatever in the fiber contemporaneously with a known cut, you could also reamplify and dispersion compensate for the slight amount of affect your work is having so that when its tested later, the OTDR is blind to your work.

Ah, the fun of Paranoia, Inc.

Deepak Jain
AiNET