[Outages-discussion] Fiber cut between Marion and Muncie IN

[Bill Wichers]

There is also the possibility here that the fiber was whacked at or near the base of a riser pole where there would only be a relatively small amount of protection (as in about 1/8" of plastic for a riser guard).

Remember that a large percentage of installed fiber -- especially fiber owned by discount carriers -- is aerial and *not* underground, or at least not underground along entire routes.

Also, I've seen critters dig deep before. There was a fiber cut several years ago on verizon north's (now frontier's) network in northern michigan like this. A beaver had burrowed down and chewed through a fiber cable. The cable was at least 2 feet deep.

Fiber is usually installed in the 3-4 foot deep range here. It's rarely much deeper than that except in special circumstances (I spec'ed in a run under a local street at 15 foot depth to avoid it getting taken out a second time by storm drain reconstruction). If you go much deeper you run into water lines and below those sanitary sewers. The drill crews try to pick depths that are mostly clear of other utilities when they can. In a rural area the cable may have gone into an open trench in which case I wouldn't be surprised if there are areas of only 18-24 inch depth.
 -Bill
[Sent using Blackberry Messaging]

----- Original Message -----
From: Jeremy Chadwick <outages at jdc.parodius.com>
To: Jeremy L. Gaddis <jeremy at evilrouters.net>
Cc: Matt Addison <maddison at lightbound.net>; outages-discussion at outages.org <outages-discussion at outages.org>
Sent: Tue Oct 11 20:21:50 2011
Subject: Re: [Outages-discussion] Fiber cut between Marion and Muncie IN

A brush hog?  I think they meant a bush hog.  A bush hog is a small
tractor/mechanical device which is used to mow forms of dry grass.
Google "bush hog" and see for yourself.

Why should you care?

Bush hogs do not drill into dirt, and normally they do not touch soil.
The blades and cutting mechanisms work above the surface of the ground.
If manually adjusted incorrectly, they can dig into soil, but the
deepest they would go -- at most -- would be about 12 inches.  Could
they break through a metal or plastic conduit?  Yes.  But bush hogs are
not rototillers!

Customers who use this carrier should be asking for an explanation,
because bush hogs won't dig as deep as fibre and conduits are supposed
to be buried.  So this means someone either laid fibre bare across the
ground, or someone did a fibre drop and simply sprinkled a few inches of
dirt on it.  This is unacceptable.

I may be a SA but I'm an old Oregon farm boy....  :-)  And my colleague
from Iowa (another farmhand) also confirms my statements about bush
hogs.  BUSH HOGS!!  GET 'ER DONE!!!

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                   Mountain View, CA, US |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.               PGP 4BD6C0CB |

On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 06:50:43PM -0400, Jeremy L. Gaddis wrote:
> Here's what I received, timestamped 2234 UTC:
> 
> "Fiber Provider Zayo Engineers found the 144 count fiber cut in half by a
> brush hog. Splicers are onsite pulling slack at this time with a
> tentative ETR for lit services of about 4.5 hrs with all others being
> 6 to 8 hours."
> 
> --
> Jeremy L. Gaddis
> http://evilrouters.net/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 5:39 PM, Matt Addison <maddison at lightbound.net> wrote:
> > In case anyone else is seeing oddities or down circuits that pass through central Indiana, we're aware of a confirmed cut between Marion and Muncie that's affecting some of Zayo's lit services and possibly others.
> >
> > OTDR and repair crew in the field, ETR TBD.
> >
> > Regards,
> > LightBound Operations
> > ~Matt
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Outages mailing list
> > Outages at outages.org
> > https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Outages mailing list
> Outages at outages.org
> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages
_______________________________________________
Outages-discussion mailing list
Outages-discussion at outages.org
https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages-discussion
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/outages-discussion/attachments/20111011/77914953/attachment.html>