US hunters shoot down Google fibre

Christopher Morrow morrowc.lists at gmail.com
Tue Sep 21 13:19:42 UTC 2010


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."
>
>




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