OT: Below grade fiber interconnect points

Fri Nov 15 20:29:42 UTC 2013

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael Sinatra" <michael at rancid.berkeley.edu>

> UC Berkeley installed 3 CEVs (Controlled Environment Vaults) below
> ground on campus about 10-15 years ago. One of them houses one of the
> two main fiber penetrations to campus, including DWDM gear,
> patch-panels, border routers, even packetshapers (back when those were
> relevant in a large EDU environment), servers, WiFi portals, etc. This
> stuff has all been in place for at least 10 years and has worked really
> well, modulo the caveats below. Two of the vaults have 6-7 19" telco
> racks, and one (the one with the big fiber entrance) also has a 23"
> rack in addition to the others.
> 
> Caveats:

[ 17 pages of caveats elided ]

So, the elephant in the room at this stage of the thing is this:

Why don't you just *put this stuff in a building*, and, y'know, never
demolish it?

Yes, you'll probably have to build it to CO grade standards, but that 
isn't exactly rocket surgery, and it seems to me that you peel
3 or 4 layers of crap off the top doing it that way.

Unless you're in, say, the Philippines, I can't see the advantage of
burying all that stuff underground on a campus-scale deployment.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
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