University Taps Sewers for Internet Access 204
Stony Stevenson writes "A web connection via the toilet bowl may sound like Google's most recent April Fool, but the University of Aberdeen plans to welcome students back with a high bandwidth internet network connected via the sewers.
The university tapped H2O Networks to provide a high capacity link for the next 10 years, enabling students to access the internet from their halls of residence. H2O Networks is a deploying dark fibre in the UK's waste water network to enable connectivity to those who have limited access. The network is known as 'fibre via the sewer'."
At last! (Score:5, Funny)
--
Captialism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called facism.
Re:At last! (Score:5, Funny)
Anal Log Hole (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:At last! (Score:5, Funny)
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Should work fine as long as you leave enough dorritos in your dorm.
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Re:At last! (Score:4, Funny)
Not really (Score:2)
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Gives new meaning... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gives new meaning... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gives new meaning... (Score:5, Funny)
Particularly if your router is going to have be installed next to the toilet...
Re:Gives new meaning... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Gives new meaning... (Score:4, Funny)
"My internet connection really stinks."
Thank you, I'm here all night. Try the fish.
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**rimshot**
Please wipe that up before you leave.
It was working just fine but then the router took a dump.
In most campuses the internet carries filth....
I sure hope nobody crapfloods their server...
If the packets aren't moving, call roto-router.
PUTP (Score:5, Funny)
How unimaginative. I propose the alternate "PUTP" (Pipe up the Pooper).
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FTTC
Fiber To The Crapper
Oh, great (Score:5, Funny)
Dark Fiber? (Score:5, Funny)
Say hi to Mr. Hanky when you see him.
Re:Dark Fiber? (Score:4, Funny)
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I can't wait to see this (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I can't wait to see this (Score:5, Funny)
(sorry, had to do it, couldn't be helped.)
Actually they use robots generally.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Also a house would not necessarily need to go up a toilet stack, as long as they have a pipe for sinks and what not. The cable probably doesn't even go into the house directly, but instead exits the house via the stack opening on the roof and then comes down again. Much more sanitary.
They run fiber through a lot of weird places (Score:5, Interesting)
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This isn't weird. This makes perfect sense. Why create new holes and new pathways when others already exist? Makes perfect financial sense to me.
I just wish that the fiber that's running next to my house (less than 100 feet away) would find its way to my doorstep. I'll happily handle it from there.
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How much extra room do they have? I imagine that all the other various pipes they might try to put fiber in are already used for something (steam, water, sewage, etc.) and that they were made a certain diameter based on the expected amount of space they would need. If they start reducing the available space by putting in cables, what effect will it have on the maximum capacity? Will the cables interfere with the flow of whatever was supposed to be in the pipes?
If having all these extra cables in the
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Aren't those the tunnels that got flooded a couple years ago when a construction crew working in a nearby channel accidentally drilled in the wrong place? IIRC, it basically shut down most of the downtown Chicago area for a week or so because the basements of virtually every building in the area got flooded out.
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Re:They run fiber through a lot of weird places (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They run fiber through a lot of weird places (Score:5, Funny)
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Some nice pictures and inf
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The irony is the Chicago freight tunnels were made by telling people they were just digging telephone line space, when all the time they were planning a mine-gauge track system for commercia
Alright! (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
Dark fibre ? (Score:5, Funny)
Has to be said.. (Score:3, Funny)
Quit hogging the toilet! (Score:5, Funny)
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Somewhere Beavis is yelling... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Somewhere Beavis is yelling... (Score:4, Funny)
"I need TCP for my Bunghole!"
New protocall needed.... (Score:2, Funny)
And I thought my internet connection was shitty.
Ok, I'm done. Sorry.
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The Gibson Suppository (Score:2, Funny)
Extruding polygons has never been so... satisfying.
Lots of mistakes here (Score:4, Informative)
What this is, is a magnet for silly replies. Welcome to Monday morning.
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I give 5 to 1 odds (Score:4, Insightful)
Rate this -1 : Meta
Laugh if you will (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is, sewer pipes are really big and they connect literally every building in any community where there is a city sewer system. If I'm going to run fiber and I don't want to spend a whole lot of time digging up the ground to bury lines and more importantly make them easily accessible for maintenance/upgrade, then the sewer (despite its obvious drawbacks) makes a pretty good place to put them. The problem I can see with this, that unless they plane to lock down all the sewer caps and manhole covers, it would be pretty easy to hack into the lines at some point; perhaps I'm mistaken.
Re:Laugh if you will (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.telegram.com/article/20070809/002-FRON
At last it makes sense! (Score:2)
Cowards (Score:2)
Since it comes from a sewer connection... (Score:2)
Utility companies do this all the time (Score:2)
protocol (Score:2)
Now you know what Microsoft meant (Score:2)
Interesting technology (Score:5, Funny)
private infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)
However, the problem they can't solve is that in the US, the town water authority would be in direct competition with a private company, a big no-no. The existing players would raise hell if it were tried in a community on more than a point to point basis (and even that would get a lot of attention). I would imagine similar outrage in the UK. However, since it is a campus network they can basically do whatever they want.
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So. There's no law against that. If companies don't like that they can get of the f#cking asses and start wiring! This has to be rare instance where there is a demand for a product that is not being met. Which kills me when government steps in to provide a service that the private sector is not, the private sector cries foul. Well, FU.
Besides, it's not like business could not use thes sewert system. They would have to pay a fee to use the sewer but that's normal.
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Its disgusting as government is supposed to help competition but instead wants to serve its lobbiests first, mainly the telecom industry. Infact the telecom industry was supposed to be like public works with minimal profits. Now look what deregulation did?
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Isn't this common? (Score:2)
University Tunnels (Score:4, Interesting)
My alma mater has an extensive system of steam tunnels(*) that run throughout the huge campus. These have been used for communications links for a long time. When I was there, we had an FDDI ring running to major buildings for a high speed backbone. I'm sure they've continued to upgrade the equipment on that fiber through the years. Having your own fiber offers a lot of interesting possibilities for great interconnect speed, and distributed services or data center decentralization.
(*) The MSU steam tunnels are the source of the Dungeons and Dragons tunnel games folklore, because of an incident with a disturbed child prodigy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_tunnel_inciden
This is great for security... (Score:5, Funny)
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Call the plumber (Score:2)
terminology recommendation (Score:2)
Cutting, snagging, dripping in the home (Score:2)
But it gives me some warning flags:
1. Fibre will now get backhoed (metaphorically) whenever sewer workers do any major work -- which means a talented technician needs to be around all the time sewer work is being done. To make a reliable network, there would need to be alternate paths to clusters of buildings/neighborhoods, etc. Is that possible in sewers? Are sewere designed with multiple paths, in case of blockage?
2. Blockage. Fibers are long things. They m
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Working for a larger company, I can tell you - regardless of the situation, where there's a backhoe - it's more than likely a F
Dirty Jobs (Score:2)
IP Freely (Score:3, Funny)
If the pipe is clogged .... (Score:2)
but with more shit clogging the pipe, probability is that
the overflow will cause a very big shitty mess that no one
will clean up, because everyone will refuse as usual to pay
for an IT bathroom attendant to clear clogs as needed.
Albuquerque (Score:3, Informative)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IGP/is_10
CHUDDs (Score:2, Funny)
I'm going with FAIL... (Score:3, Insightful)
On my network we utilize the steam tunnels and access tunnels which house plumbing to run the fiber, but never *in* the pipes... that just doesn't make sense. Sounds like a shitty mess to me, best of luck with that one.
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Many universities have not kept up with the times, and this is just one more illustration of that in action. We manage to have every square foot
More shit... (Score:5, Funny)
stuff in the sewers (Score:2)
We drain all kinds of trash into the sewage system: detergents, lye, human waste, etc etc etc. This stuff has to cause some harm sooner or later.
And not a single reference (Score:2)
That's not the real name (Score:3, Funny)
A Sewer Utility Perspective (Score:4, Informative)
If we do not do this, we risk having a storm flow do it for us. The grease coagulates and can form a blockage in the sewer mains. I've been at a large wastewater pumping station during a storm and these grease balls trap sewage, causing sewage overflows, despite an otherwise properly running pumping station.
What does bearing does this have with a network cable through the sewers? Well, it better be VERY tough and resilient to grease buildup. The force of jet rodding the pipe could easily break the cable unless it's been designed for this sort of abuse.
Oh, and by the way, if you haven't already learned this, DO NOT POUR GREASE OR FAT DOWN THE DRAIN! The stuff I'm talking about is the irreducible, routine buildup. The less of it you send down the drain, the less likely it will be that you'll have a backup flood your basement with it.
What happens when the pipe is clogged? (Score:3, Insightful)
What happens when waste water pipes back up and the augers, snakes, and fancy plumbing tools shred the fiber to pieces? There's a reason why we use dedicated conduit for telecommunications lines.
A better solution exists, and that's the one used by IPN - Instead of sewage lines, they use the natural gas lines to run fiber optics. Gas will never plug up a pipe and fiber will never start a fire as it's only photons.
has anybody considered the security aspects??? (Score:3, Funny)
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Oh, and I hear that Microsoft doesn't decompose very well, you're better using Andrux or Loobuntu if you want to be ecologically friendly.
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The ability to mount and dump filesystems did not amuse you enough? You better not dump it, while it is still mounted, by the way...
What's the DBA doing? He is taking a dump... Of the database...
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Poor you. That show has made me realize how happy I am that I don't have smellovision.
Re:just like my crap DSL from Qwest (Score:5, Funny)
About as much as you can trust a company that can't spell "googol."
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>About as much as you can trust a company that can't spell "googol."
Hell, I'm still waiting for Microsoft to spell "bloody arsefucking" properly. They barely got any of the letters right.
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This can't be for real...can it?
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Are you using a version of IE that supports the marquee tag?
Seriously, who uses IE?