Elderly lady cuts off Internet in Armenia

http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/06/elderly-georgian-lady-disconnects-armenian-internet-for-half-a-d/

by tunaslut • 15 years ago

37 16 15 years ago

engadget.com

Peroni• 15 years ago

Not just Armenia: In addition, areas of Georgia and Azerbaijan were also taken offline.

Much more detail in The Guardian article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-c...

drtse42• 15 years ago

Here an interactive map: http://grt.ge/?m=static&s=6 , mouse over the nodes to display a summary of the available connections. See Armenia, Azerbaijan, etc... south of them.

GrandMasterBirt• 15 years ago

The one wire to rule them all?

Seriously, invest into a second wire going overhead. Perhaps a third going a slightly different rout just incase.

CaptainDecisive• 15 years ago

I like the euphemism 'while foraging for copper wire'. Maybe we should use that phrase for torrents 'piracy?!? - no, don't be silly - I was just foraging for movies'.

BoppreH5• 15 years ago

The guardian articles seems to explain it better:

  Pulling up unused copper cables for scrap is a common means of making money in the former Soviet Union. Some entrepreneurs have even used tractors to wrench out hundreds of metres of cable from the former nuclear testing ground at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan.

JoeAltmaier• 15 years ago

And stealing pipe is a common way to make extra cash in Ireland. Stealing is stealing.

CallMeV• 15 years ago

They'll probably reinstall that cable, now, with one small addition: an off switch, and a soldier on post nearby. "Hello, Sergey, headquarters here. there's another insurrection. Throw the off switch." Sergey throws off switch "Okay, done." no signal "Hello? Hello?"

ddol• 15 years ago

‎"Our fibre backbone conforms to the highest level's of physical security", Mr. Ionatamishvili later said - calming worries that any curious eavesdropper could Man-in-the-Middle his countries communications. "We hide at least 70% of it under train tracks or shrubbery."

BoppreH5• 15 years ago

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-c...

"An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper to sell as scrap when she accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to all of neighbouring Armenia"

Emphasis mine.

selectnull2• 15 years ago

Poor lady faces prison. What about people responsible for laying a cable like that, accessible to anyone with small scissors?

BoppreH5• 15 years ago

She was digging for copper wires, and not even in her property. The photo you see with a small scissors is just a stock photo.

selectnull2• 15 years ago

Small scissors were a sarcasm on my part :)

The point I was trying to make was that whoever lays "critical fiber optic cable" in a way than an elderly lady comes with any kind of a tool, should be put to trial instead of poor woman who is probably living in poverty trying to survive.

drtse42• 15 years ago

What puzzles me is that Georgian Telecom didn't put in place any secondary line/s to provide an alternative path in case of issues on the working path.

Update: Checking Railway Telecom site http://grt.ge/?m=static&s=5 (here for the interactive map: http://grt.ge/?m=static&s=6) looks like it's an optical network based on CWDM equipments with links that provide a bit more than two 10GE between the nodes, definitely not a top-notch network. Automated path protection facilities couldn't even be available for networks of this type.

Update 2: Just noticed that the two bigger 10GE paths create a channel only from Poti to Tbilisi, so bandwidth for communications between internal nodes is provided by the other links (slower optical links and the ethernet ones (copper? hm) shown on the map).

grigy• 15 years ago

I was affected by this outage. During that time I realized that Internet has became vital part of out life, like electricity or water.

Elderly lady cuts off Internet in Armenia

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