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Gunplay Blamed For Cutting Fiber
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Aug 21, 2007 11:30 AM
from the worse-than-backhoes dept.
from the worse-than-backhoes dept.
coondoggie writes "Internet service providers in the US experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire. TeliaSonera AB, which lost the northern leg of its US network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot up over a length of a kilometer. 'Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable,' said a TeliaSonera spokesman. The company declined to name the service provider whose lines had been cut, but a source familiar with the situation said the lines are owned by Level 3 Communications Inc. Level 3 could not be reached for comment."
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obl. D&D (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Go find your frickin DMG.
Re:obl. D&D (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Me, I got all I can do to survive the surprise round with my dialup FTP server, miserable thing. I will kill it, I WILL!
Kill the wabbit, Kill the wabbit, Kill the wabbit, Kill the wabbit, Kill the wabbit, KILL THE WABBIT!
Re:obl. D&D (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
I guess someone... (Score:4, Funny)
1 kilometer == Distance of a Single Shot (Score:5, Interesting)
So it was deliberate, but also quite quick if done right too. Pretty devious way to take out fiber because the entire length needs replacing, not just a short section that requires a bypass.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It could be a contractor though.
Re:1 kilometer == Distance of a Single Shot (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:1 kilometer == Distance of a Single Shot (Score:5, Insightful)
However I still think that a kilometer -- or anything more than a few feet, really -- is longer than they would move inside the cable. Maybe if you fired at an oblique angle into an empty water pipe or something, so that the pellet could ricochet along inside the tube, but a cable (where the outside is presumably made of some fairly soft material that would absorb energy with each impact)
To wipe out a section of cable that long I think that someone would need to walk along and repeatedly shoot it.
What I find most interesting is that it was deliberate destruction, it wasn't accidental destruction or theft. There have been a lot of cases lately where people have stolen cable or wiring for its scrap or resale value, so I wouldn't have been totally surprised if someone had just cut and then hauled away a large section of cable (although, in the case of fiber, I don't think there's much of a resale value and they'd probably damage it beyond repair during the theft). But to go and destroy it but leave it in place, makes it pretty clear that someone did it quite deliberately, and that the damage was the goal and not just an accidental byproduct.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1 km is over 1000 yards. Most shotguns loss their effectiveness after 70-80 or even 100 yards and rarely have enough punch to kill something after 60 yards or so. And this is in an open field without the small confined walls the for the
Duh!!! - They weren't Shooting the Fiber! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:I guess someone... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Bored hunters are assholes (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:I usually stay out of gun control debates... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I usually stay out of gun control debates... (Score:5, Funny)
We already have gun control.
Those with the guns are in control.
Parent
Re:If you go with one cliche'... (Score:4, Funny)
Around here, 'gun control' means that we hit what we aim at.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Something doesn't add up here, most American's wouldn't have a clue how long that is. I'm wondering if this is a European planted story, to bring up gun control????
Hehehe..ok, guess that a bit far fetched for even the most enthusiastic conspiracy theorists...but, still, kilometers in a US story? Strange.....
Re:I usually stay out of gun control debates... (Score:4, Funny)
It happens. Reporters, being somewhat lazy on the technical end sometimes, will run with whatever units their source provided them. Some happy-go-lucky SI geek gets a hold of an impressionable or lazy reporter, and you'll get kilometers, grams, liters (litres!) and all other sorts of perversion and anti-American sentiment. That's how I understand how it happens, anyway.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I usually stay out of gun control debates... (Score:4, Informative)
So, no, the original article was in Imperial measurements, but the summary converts it to km for the sake of having a round number.
Parent
"Hello? IT Help Desk?" (Score:5, Funny)
Well.. (Score:5, Funny)
The mob (Score:5, Interesting)
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Not Level3 (Score:5, Informative)
Am I the Only One... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Am I the Only One... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Shotguns (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny, but makes the idea of running fiber through the sewers [slashdot.org] sound pretty good from a security standpoint. There, I've done it -- let the fiber/sewer jokes begin again.
Gansta Rappa's (Score:5, Funny)
Re:is that how all gun owners talk? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
You can have my fiber... (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine (Score:5, Funny)
ObPrincess Bride (Score:3, Funny)
How is this even possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shooting above ground cable doesn't have the penetration issue, but hitting that line 30 or more feet up is quite challenging as well. Any round that did hit however would stand a good chance of severing the cable altogether, making that section between poles simply fall to the ground at the severed end. There is still the problem of firing multiple high powered rounds without making the local police unduly interested. Does anyone know for sure if this was above ground or underground cable? And is it maybe hunting season in Ohio? If the cables ARE above ground and in a rural area, then maybe some drunken yahoos thought it would be a good idea to use the cables as a target in some macho bullshit marksmanship test. Most hunting rounds can easily go a kilometer or more downrange and retain enough energy to sever cable, on the other hand, deliberately hitting a target that slender from a klick away is a feat even elite military snipers would likely find challenging. Drunken yahoos would have to be within tens of yards to have a hope in hell of achieving it. One or more drunken idiots repeatedly shooting off a rifle within sight of a road does tend to attract official notice even during hunting season in rural Canada.
of course (Score:5, Funny)
Well, duh. Their fiber's been all shot up. Of course they couldn't be reached.
Story doesn't make sense (Score:5, Interesting)
This story doesn't make a bit of sense. They dug up some cable, and found it had been shot? Are they saying someone first dug it up, shot it, and then gave it a decent burial? That would be a lot of work. Does the cable perhaps run along a sewer tunnel, and someone crawled down the tunnel and shot up the cable over an interval of a kilometer? (Just be alert for a guy who's talking very loudly, and keeps saying, "Speak up, I can't hear you".) And no, a shotgun blast is not going to penetrate anything like a kilometer of cable if you shoot down the length of the cable.
I'm not saying it didn't happen, but this article tells me little more than that there was a cable outage, and that the cause can't be explained coherently. Maybe it was mice...they've been known to chew up fiber optics. But that wouldn't make a good headline, would it?
Montville, OH (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like... (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the cable companies will sit up and start burying their cables now.
speed holes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait, wait, wait. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.teliasoneraic.com/tsicWeb/tsic/section
Parent
something new! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
It was all a misunderstaning (Score:5, Funny)
hawk
Parent
Re:Wait, wait, wait. (Score:5, Funny)
"In a bizarre story coming out of Ohio, A Mr. Johanson allegedly went on a shooting spree. He shot out every window in his house, blasted his mailbox, walked down to the corner gas station and shot up a pump, shot out several street lights, and finally shot up a section of fiber cable. When finally captured and confronted by police, he claimed he was cleaning his rifle when it accidently went off."
{Nods to George Carlin as the source of this joke...}
Parent
Article is wrong, it was Cogent not Level3. (Score:5, Informative)
Over on the NANOG mailing list, which has a lot of people from the major U.S. backbones and networks subscribed to it, it is being reported/said that the line was Cogent's, not Level 3's, and that Cogent at one point had an advisory up about it.
Lots of people posted traceroutes that seem to confirm that it was definitely Cogent that took the hit. Packets were basically going all over the place on their network yesterday, and people who had fixed their routers to prefer Cogent over other backbones (apparently Bell) were having some slowdowns as a result.
See http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg02483
Parent
Re:don't forget the mantra now (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I cast bullets bullets and load cartridges by the thousands in my shop. The tools and materials are simple and cheap.
Ammunition control would be nearly as big a time & resource sink for the government as it's current campaign to stomp out the production and distribution of a certain popular, easy to grow, weed.