RE: Fiber Cut in CA?

["Scott Berkman" <scott () sberkman net>]

Cross-country Fibers very often follow existing utility rights of way.  So even in a wide open desert, the places the 
fibers go are the "busy" spots.  Sometimes its train tracks, sometimes its gas pipelines, sometimes its electric, 
sometimes it’s a road, but very rarely is fiber like that "on its own".

So the cut was likely construction on whatever the fiber was near.  The other option is that the fiber provider was 
actually doing maintenance (adding capacity, fixing a troubled strand) and did the damage themselves.

        -Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: Bret Clark [mailto:bclark () spectraaccess com] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 6:37 PM
To: nanog
Subject: Re: Fiber Cut in CA?

   Good point...so if the cut is in the middle of nowhere without easy
   access...then how the hell did it get cut? Malicious?
   Matt Simmons wrote:

And in an open desert, back hoes can smell fiber from miles away.

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Bill Stewart [1]<nonobvious () gmail com> wrote:

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 12:04 AM,  [2]<charles () knownelement com> wrote:

That is one long protect path. Yikes.

There be mountains in the way, with deserts in between, and not a lot
of people to justify diversity or railroads and highways to run it
along.
Not many carriers have more than one fiber route across Arizona and
New Mexico, especially for the newer high-capacity fibers (i.e. built
this millennium, after the financial excesses of the 90s.)
I'm no longer current on what routes are being used by what carriers,
but if you don't have two routes across northern Arizona ( I-10/I-40,
with restoration routes like Barstow->LasVegas->Flagstaff->Phoenix),
then the next alternative is Barstow->LasVegas->SaltLakeCity->Denver,
at which point some carriers have routes down to Phoenix via Tucumcari
or Amarillo, and the rest are going to go through Dallas, and anybody
who doesn't have the LasVegas->SLC route is going to use
Sacramento->SLC->Denver, possibly also including San Jose, depending
on what routes they've got across California.

So, yeah, instead of the nice short 2200-mile restoration routes you
can use if SF->Seattle fails, cable cuts in the Southwest can be
really long...
--
----
            Thanks;     Bill

Note that this isn't my regular email account - It's still experimental so far.
And Google probably logs and indexes everything you send it.

References

   1. mailto:nonobvious () gmail com
   2. mailto:charles () knownelement com