
Elderly lady cuts off Internet in Armenia - tunaslut
http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/06/elderly-georgian-lady-disconnects-armenian-internet-for-half-a-d/
======
Peroni
Not just Armenia: _In addition, areas of Georgia and Azerbaijan were also
taken offline._

Much more detail in The Guardian article:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-
woman-c...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-
web-access)

~~~
drtse4
Here an interactive map:
[http://grt.ge/?m=static&s=6](http://grt.ge/?m=static&s=6) , mouse over the
nodes to display a summary of the available connections. See Armenia,
Azerbaijan, etc... south of them.

~~~
GrandMasterBirt
The one wire to rule them all?

Seriously, invest into a second wire going overhead. Perhaps a third going a
slightly different rout just incase.

------
ddol
‎"Our fibre backbone conforms to the highest level's of physical security",
Mr. Ionatamishvili later said - calming worries that any curious eavesdropper
could Man-in-the-Middle his countries communications. "We hide at least 70% of
it under train tracks or shrubbery."

~~~
BoppreH
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-
woman-c...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-
web-access)

"An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper to sell as scrap when she
accidentally sliced through an _underground_ cable and cut off internet
services to all of neighbouring Armenia"

Emphasis mine.

------
CaptainDecisive
I like the euphemism 'while foraging for copper wire'. Maybe we should use
that phrase for torrents 'piracy?!? - no, don't be silly - I was just foraging
for movies'.

~~~
BoppreH
The guardian articles seems to explain it better:

    
    
      Pulling up unused copper cables for scrap is a common means of making money in the former Soviet Union. Some entrepreneurs have even used tractors to wrench out hundreds of metres of cable from the former nuclear testing ground at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And stealing pipe is a common way to make extra cash in Ireland. Stealing is
stealing.

~~~
BoppreH
It might not be lawful, but I see it as somehow _less wrong_ than stealing
cables in use, or starting the trend.

Related video, though I don't endorse this guy's actions:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkLI2ywzRsA>

"I steal copper, not [from] family men. And send me my 20% [of this recordings
profits] later."

It's a weird world we live on.

------
CallMeV
They'll probably reinstall that cable, now, with one small addition: an off
switch, and a soldier on post nearby. "Hello, Sergey, headquarters here.
there's another insurrection. Throw the off switch." _Sergey throws off
switch_ "Okay, done." _no signal_ "Hello? Hello?"

------
selectnull
Poor lady faces prison. What about people responsible for laying a cable like
that, accessible to anyone with small scissors?

~~~
BoppreH
She was digging for copper wires, and not even in her property. The photo you
see with a small scissors is just a stock photo.

~~~
selectnull
Small scissors were a sarcasm on my part :)

The point I was trying to make was that whoever lays "critical fiber optic
cable" in a way than an elderly lady comes with __any kind of a tool __,
should be put to trial instead of poor woman who is probably living in poverty
trying to survive.

~~~
BoppreH
If the story was about a _dog_ that dug some wires I would agree, but people
are capable of a lot of things, even at old age. God knows how long she'd been
digging.

Also, on the Guardian article:

    
    
      The cable is owned by the Georgian railway network. It is heavily protected, but landslides or heavy rain may have exposed it to scavengers.
    

If that's just an excuse or not, we will never know.

------
drtse4
What puzzles me is that Georgian Telecom didn't put in place any secondary
line/s to provide an alternative path in case of issues on the working path.

Update: Checking Railway Telecom site
[http://grt.ge/?m=static&s=5](http://grt.ge/?m=static&s=5) (here for the
interactive map: [http://grt.ge/?m=static&s=6](http://grt.ge/?m=static&s=6))
looks like it's an optical network based on CWDM equipments with links that
provide a bit more than two 10GE between the nodes, definitely not a top-notch
network. Automated path protection facilities couldn't even be available for
networks of this type.

Update 2: Just noticed that the two bigger 10GE paths create a channel only
from Poti to Tbilisi, so bandwidth for communications between internal nodes
is provided by the other links (slower optical links and the ethernet ones
(copper? hm) shown on the map).

------
grigy
I was affected by this outage. During that time I realized that Internet has
became vital part of out life, like electricity or water.

