[150709] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: BBC reports Kenya fiber break
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven Bellovin)
Thu Mar 1 13:00:44 2012
From: Steven Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
In-Reply-To: <CAJNg7VKUeah+KsqF-Zd9sgC9HGh=D=urun3LyNHmsO-x5=0=Og@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 12:59:45 -0500
To: Marshall Eubanks <marshall.eubanks@gmail.com>
Cc: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Feb 29, 2012, at 11:17 17AM, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Justin M. Streiner
> <streiner@cluebyfour.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, 29 Feb 2012, Rodrick Brown wrote:
>>=20
>>> 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.
>>=20
>>=20
>> Constantly shifting ice shelves and glaciers make a terrestrial cable
>> landing very difficult to implement on Antarctica. Satellite =
connectivity
>> is likely the only feasible option. There are very few places in
>> Antarctica that are reliably ice-free enough of the time to make a =
viable
>> terrestrial landing station. Getting connectivity from the landing =
station
>> to other places on the continent is another matter altogether.
>=20
> Apparently at least one long fiber pull has been contemplated.
>=20
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/2207259.stm
>=20
> (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 )
>=20
> As far as I can tell, this was never done, and the South Pole gets its
> Internet mostly via
> TDRSS.
>=20
> http://www.usap.gov/technology/contentHandler.cfm?id=3D1971
Yes. I had discussions with some of their network support folks circa =
1994 -- with
limited bandwidth (DS0, as I recall) and only a few hours of =
connectivity per day,
when a satellite was over the horizon, they were very concerned about =
attackers
clogging their link.
--Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
