Whatever the final toll, one thing is certain: Whoever did this is in
> a world of trouble if he, she or they get caught.
> "I pity the individuals who have done this," said San Jose Police > Chief Rob Davis.
> Ten fiber-optic cables carrying were cut at four locations in the
Yeah, and I bet the perps were really annoyed when they saw there wasn't any copper in those cables . . .
How much does anyone want to bet it was something stupid like that more than intentional DOS?
One of the prime reasons I believe it was someone inside is that they knew just what to cut and where. The everyday idiot doesn't know where most UG fiber is.
Some days ago I received an email from a resident of Santa Cruz with considerable experience in the business who suggests the work was an inside job, likely the result of CWA union contract expiration. He also mentions that Verizon likely turned off its cell sites even though cell to cell was working because they couldn't do SS7 billing off network. Other cell carriers remained up for cell to cell calls.
Perhaps readers have additional inside information to share?
It's not hard to figure out. Just look and see what name is on the maintenance hatch cover.
That being said, how sure are "we", as in the general public, in our belief that only the four super duper important cables were cut? How's about the scenario that a couple of dozen were sliced, but the other 20 or so weren't even noticed and aren't being reported?
I used to work for the major telco in Australia and I had access to all sorts of info like this, junction plans, local area cable distribution stuff etc, all available by request but *only* to people with the appropriate level of security *inside* the organisation.
These days with so much external plant maintenance outsourced to contractors so much of this sensitive info would be easily available to anyone with malicious intent and a few dollars to throw in the right direction.
A few years ago major trunk cables in a city were cut in Australia by someone (in a pit) grinding off both sides of the cables at the points where they left the conduits, so it was the worse possible situation for those who had to repair the damage. It was suspected this was done by a disgruntled former telco employee with detailed knowledge of the infrastructure who knew how to do maximum damage, but I don't think that anything was ever proved.
All it would take is a simultaneous attack at 5 or 6 major nodes (out of the hundreds to choose from) and the damage could last for weeks.
I think your friend out to reconsider his statement. at&t California is not involved in the contract talks, it is the South Eastern Companies that have expired contracts. From what I can see the cables were cont in a random way and these are the type that are not Fiber Rings so no real backup. By the way I don't work for at&t.
Yes, union contract issues could certainly be a root cause. Or just general vandalism by someone with a bit of knowledge. It's hard to tell.
About 25 years ago I used to maintain and install IBM 3270 terminals. These were located in several buildings around the campus and connected via coax cable running in the steam tunnels. We frequently had to get out a TDR and guesstimate the number of feet along some tunnel to where a cable had gone bad. The hot environment was not kind to coax, but it would not fail too often. One incident we went into the tunnel to find about 20 feet of cable and been cut out. Our speculation at the time was that some student had been "exploring" the tunnels, a fairly normal passtime on college campuses, and decided he needed a piece of coax for his cable TV hookup. Now,
3270s used RG58 coax that is 50ohm instead of the RG56 75ohm for cable, but it looked very similar and would probably work OK for a short jumper.
I guess what I'm saying is that I would not be surprised to hear that the fiber incident was just random bad luck and stupidity rather than specific bad intent. On the other hand, intentional sabotage would not really surprise me either. Union problems or just an ex-employee with a grudge is entirely possible, or even a knowlegable customer with a grudge. I tend to believe the mundane explanations first. The old saying, "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" holds up fairly well in my experience.
Could be, but when a union contract is about to expire and things start breaking down in suspicious ways, my first thought is that there might be a connection between these things.
Actually, the 3270s used RG/62 which is much weirder, at 93 ohms. It's handy for making impedance matching sections on 50 ohm cables, but using it for cable TV would probably not be a very good idea. Wouldn't hold the F connectors too well either.
However, it was the MULTIPLE cuts that exacerbated the bad situation. Once the repair droid prepared the OUT cable, he probably shot it for distance, only to learn that the cable was open in the next hole - and so on.
Anybody that would use Cheapernet between buildings deserves the resulting disaster. It was lousy enough within buildings. I _have_ seen people do short runs between buildings using regular thick Ethernet and that was horrible enough.
No, the 3270 standard predates Arcnet by a long shot. One of the reasons that Arcnet used the RG/62 was to allow it to use existing legacy cabling.
I recall at one job we had 10-Base-2 thin-net coax everywhere in the building. One day the boss and I are doing some database work and all of a sudden the net connection for the major part of the bulding goes dark.
We pulled all sorts of coax out trying to find the problem until I finally noted the broken T connection. The boss was sitting near it and must have accidentally kicked it.
Spent the next couple weeks wiring the building for CAT-5.
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