[84512] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: CAT5 surge/lightning strike protection recommendations?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Wed Sep 14 08:46:29 2005
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: "Robert E.Seastrom" <rs@seastrom.com>
Cc: Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org>, David Lesher <wb8foz@nrk.com>,
nanog list <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:33:20 EDT."
<87ll1zn81b.fsf@valhalla.seastrom.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:44:16 -0400
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
In message <87ll1zn81b.fsf@valhalla.seastrom.com>, "Robert E.Seastrom" writes:
>
>
>Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> writes:
>
>> Seriously, though, that's exactly what you're describing, and about what I'd
>> suggest in a no-other-option scenario -- but if it's possible to pull fiber
>> through the conduits, it would probably be far less expensive long term, or
>> even medium term if the physical fiber spools can be bought cheaply enough.
>
>For those who haven't priced the stuff lately, in spools of 1000' the
>per-foot prices of 2-strand MM tight buffered fiber suitable for
>pulling in conduits like he (hopefully) has tends to be
>price-competitive with cat5 on a per-foot basis. Extra strands are
>cheap; the pricey part of fiber is the jacket and strength members;
>even super-pure glass is not that expensive overall.
>
>The expensive parts in the equation turn out to be the termination
>trays and connectors.
>
Also the labor of pulling it, when there's already something in the
(shudder) ground.
My direct experience with running long-distance underground cable is
dated -- let's put it like this; we were dealing with RS-232 -- but the
countermeasures to a direct strike on copper cables don't seem to have
improved nearly enough...
--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb