It would seem, what have the sharks?

The holiday of the first of April is known by two names: April Fool's Day and April Fool's Day. Apparently, the first option is closer to most people, so on April 1, there is traditionally a huge amount of all kinds of fake news, sensations, discoveries, etc. But to come up with a really credible and funny story is not easy, and it is almost impossible to fool someone on that day, because everyone is just waiting for a dirty trick.

Our operations department, which is responsible for maintaining infrastructure, regularly encounters ridiculous, funny and ridiculous cases, after which we have to restore communication channels and equipment. The same can be said about any operating department in any company in the world. And since today is not only April Fool's Day, but also April Fool's Day, we decided not to invent, but to tell real stories from the everyday practice of people who “keep our networks”.

Cable in the mountains

Local people periodically steal cables containing non-ferrous metals; even high-voltage power lines are sometimes subject to vandalism. In order to somehow protect communications, wires are buried deeper, but this rarely helps: they steal kilometers, and sometimes tens of kilometers of cable. But you don’t hide the wires in the mountains, so you can even cut off your grandmother if you wish. What happened in 2011 in Georgia: a local woman aged 75 years old cut a piece of optical cable from a passing line. It turned out that she connected neighboring Armenia with the Internet, which for five hours was left without a network (about 90% of Armenian traffic goes through Georgia). Due to the redistribution of the load, problems with the Internet were observed in many regions of Georgia and Azerbaijan.
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Tags in the wells

Many telecommunications companies are trying to somehow minimize their losses on the restoration of fiber optic cables damaged by thieves in search of copper. For example, in Mytishchi in cable wells for some time they even began to hang tags “There is NO copper in this cable!”

Very sturdy snag

With the trunk intercity fiber also happen stories. The cable was laid very high quality, high degree of protection, but after a while the optical fibers one after another stopped transmitting the signal. It turned out that all the cliffs occurred in one place. Upon arrival, the installers found a small swamp, and in it - a stuck jeep and two men, who cut the cable running along the bottom with axes. When asked why they are doing this, they replied: “Why, they have found a snag. Do not believe it - we cut the third day! ”

Fire safety

Frequent cases of accidents involving violation of rules of operation. For example, in 2010, a team of workers from one southern republic made an extension to the pub. It, in turn, adjoined the premises of the telecommunications company, where all kinds of camera equipment were installed. And once at the construction site there was a strong explosion followed by a fire. The fire did not reach the equipment, but the firemen generously filled the roof with water, arranging a shower for the equipment racks. Covered with fiber optic wiring going through the collectors. Because of this, the entire Southeast administrative district of Moscow remained uncommitted for a day, and long-distance communication was restored a couple of days. By the way, literally six months before that, a Vietnamese restaurant burned down next to it, and all the equipment was still in soot.

Zero YouTube

There are also stories related not to physical damage to equipment and cables, but to illiteracy of employees of a national provider. A few years ago, the Pakistani authorities decided to increase censorship and tried to block access to YouTube. There are three ways to block traffic for users of any provider, the most obvious is to block certain URLs. This requires checking all traffic, which is expensive in terms of resources. The second way is to change DNS records, but this obstacle is easy to get around. The third way is to block IP addresses, which is much simpler and more efficient, so the Pakistanis chose him. But instead of blocking specific addresses and redirecting to a stub page, they decided to block the IP range. As a result, due to the technical features of the backbone provider equipment, access to YouTube has disappeared altogether from all users around the world. It was possible to restore access in about a day, and the final elimination of the consequences of the activity of Pakistanis took several days.

Builders vs. installers

Problems with equipment and cables are caused not only by local residents, but also by builders. This story occurred during the construction of the shopping center. A fiber-optic line was brought to the building, according to all the installation rules, it was stretched across the entire building, put on all copies of architectural plans. During the installation of the ventilation duct, it turned out that it intersects at a right angle with a tray with an optical cable suspended from the ceiling. The builders did not long puzzled over the way to resolve this collision: they simply cut 1.5 meters of the cable tray and stretched their box directly.

Incidents in the kingdom of Poseidon

Even ocean telecommunication equipment lying deep at the bottom is not insured against risks. These powerful, multi-layered armored cables laid along the bottom break with enviable regularity. It is believed that usually anchored ships and fishing seiners are to blame. There is also an opinion that thinner cables may tear ... sharks.



On this exotic note, we complete our selection. If you can share with us other funny, funny and ridiculous cases from the experience of exploitation services, welcome to the comments.