Re: Self healing, Diversity-Redundancy, Submarine FO Splicing
Dave, thanks for bailing me out with undersea-related questions which are
consistent with those from Dennis. The edit timer creamed me when I was
about to add some language about the use of cameras, electronic locator
methods, remote operated vehicles (ROVs), etc.
To answer your last question first, in shallow water closest to the landing
point, double armor is used. The thickness and number of layers of armor
tapers gradually width ocean depth. Don't know for sure if this aids in the
location process, but it makes sense if electronic means are being
employed. There was once a problem with the emissions being sent out
from fiber optic cables attracting sharks. Don't recall if they were
ultrasonic waves, or what, but the sharks had a field day chewing up the
armor, and through to the fiber in some cases, causing major failures to
occur. Anyone recall this, and what the fix was?
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"Self-healing: Is that to say that it's self-healing to nicks and scrapes,
but not to limb-severing wounds?"
Yes. If the limbs in your analogy happen to be Digital Cross Connects
and classical switching machines, and the scrapes and nicks happen to be
fiber breaks and SONET nodes.
---
"Geographic diversity of the cable routes... by some distance greater
than the bucket width of a backhoe... and preferably many miles.. is the
only way to achieve this, correct?"
End to end geographic diversity, with no crossovers anywhere along the
way. That one exception is probably due to a main central manhole
somewhere that has all the activity in it. It will get you every time. |
