[150649] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: BBC reports Kenya fiber break
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marshall Eubanks)
Wed Feb 29 11:18:15 2012
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.1202290938350.22197@whammy.cluebyfour.org>
Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:17:17 -0500
From: Marshall Eubanks <marshall.eubanks@gmail.com>
To: "Justin M. Streiner" <streiner@cluebyfour.org>
Cc: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Justin M. Streiner
<streiner@cluebyfour.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Feb 2012, Rodrick Brown wrote:
>
>> There's about 1/2 a dozen or so known private and government research
>> facilities on Antarctica and I'm surprised to see no fiber end points on
>> that continent? This can't be true.
>
>
> Constantly shifting ice shelves and glaciers make a terrestrial cable
> landing very difficult to implement on Antarctica. =A0Satellite connectiv=
ity
> is likely the only feasible option. =A0There are very few places in
> Antarctica that are reliably ice-free enough of the time to make a viable
> terrestrial landing station. =A0Getting connectivity from the landing sta=
tion
> to other places on the continent is another matter altogether.
Apparently at least one long fiber pull has been contemplated.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/2207259.stm
(Note : the headline is incorrect - the Internet reached the South Pole in =
1994,
via satellite, of course :
http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/90s/ftp1.html )
As far as I can tell, this was never done, and the South Pole gets its
Internet mostly via
TDRSS.
http://www.usap.gov/technology/contentHandler.cfm?id=3D1971
Regards
Marshall
>
> jms
>
