Maps of terrestrial fibre networks aren’t great. The Internet Society wants to fix that

The Internet Society wants to help improve maps that depict terrestrial optic fibre networks by having regulators and carriers alike promote and adopt the Open Fibre Data Standard it helped to create. Internet Society senior director Steve Song on Monday explained that the standard was developed partly in response to his …

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A fibre network at home

I've been using fibre at home for years now after waking up one morning and finding all the internet connected PC's dead after a lighting strike on the garden tree. A few local strikes since then have not resulted in problems.

[rcxb]

Re: A fibre network at home

Harder to lightning-proof your power lines.

You can get lightning arrestors for RJ45 as well, but switching to fibre can be a good choice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure this is a good idea. Given the state of governments these days, it's probably best that they don't know where the fiber is.

[doublelayer]

Do you mean local governments or foreign ones? If you're worried about governments of other countries wanting to attack or sabotage the wires, you can decide to keep the information private, though the example of Ukraine suggests that this may not be necessary. However, for everyone who is making the data public, a standard format is much more useful than whatever one they just created.

If you're referring to local governments, they already know where the cables are in most cases. If they are going to do something to them, and I'm not sure what that something would be, they won't have much problem locating them. In most cases, they wouldn't need to; if a country wants something spied on or blocked, they don't need to tap the cables because they can have the ISP do it for them. They generally already know every company that operates cables, so they can send their request to all of them and let those companies figure out how to implement the demand. The ability to push back against such moves depends on the rule of law and the integrity of people who might receive commands to do unethical things, not on hoping that nobody knows where the cable is.

[Dimmer]

In the states, there are companies that specialize in knowing where every fiber is located. You call 411 and for free they come mark it and any other utility as well.

Years back our phones went down. When that happens you drive around till you find the guys that are digging so you can get an idea of how long it will be out.

Found the guy standing next to his rig and asked him what happened. “The flag guy miss flagged it.” he said, “now stay a moment and you will see the magic flags appearing. “

Sure enough, this small truck comes to a screeching stop in front of us. The flagger jumps out and starts stabbing flag in the ground around the hole. Jumps back up in his truck and peels out and disappears.

Next the local administrator for the telco shows up and starts berating the construction guy while pointing at the flags and explaining how much it was going to cost the worker. He then leaves.

I asked him, aren’t you concerned? Smiling he said “Nope, I took pictures before you got here”. Don’t you love those magic flags.

[david 12]

Post 9-11, or more accurately, after attacks on the Philippines power gird in the 1980s, maps of any kind of infrastructure in Aus have disappeared.

Ironically, better power grid maps now exist for the Philippines power grid than for the Australian power grid.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

I presume the maps still exist (and are used by infrastructure organisations), but just aren't publicly available?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have thought that....

the main point of this exercise is be to be able to bake a cake in the shape of the internet...

[vogon00]

Just because you can...

...doesn't mean you should.

By all means, keep better records of physical fibre locations and the capacity etc. .... but be cautious with publication of that info.

When it comes to infrastructure locations, it doesn't pay to give away info like this - at least in any detail ^[1] - so that bad actors don't get to easily find out how to physically attack this here infrastructure stuff. It's one thing to announce you have something, but quite another to disclose enough about it to jeopardize it physically.

Why make it easy to disrupt things on land ^[2].....we've already got enough problems with the undersea gear!

Just for the hell of it, think how you would damage something like this ... and then keep the results to yourself! Don't forget to reject 'The Dark Side' when you're done..

^{[1] Props to El Reg for the obfuscation in this.}

^{[2] Props to Grady for his usual balanced and accurate example/analysis here}.

[rcxb]

Re: Just because you can...

The "bad actors" are builders with JCBs. If you don't put a warning sign above your fibre, expect it to be cut several times per year.

Once you have that, anybody can spend some time and make a map.