This was a 48-strand fiber backbone. The squirrels gnawed through the
outer sheath, and eventually through the plastic covering on some of the
12-strand bundles. They put in a new section of backbone, making 48
butt-joints on each end. I have a few photos that I will put up later.
Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
On 12/27/2013 5:34 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
> Was it a fiber cut or just copper?
>
> On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 5:26 PM, Jim Nichols <jhnichols@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I watched some of the repairs today, and have a new appreciation for
>> what these guys have to deal with.
>>
>> Jim Nichols
>> Tullahoma, TN USA
>>
>> On 12/27/2013 11:52 AM, Ken Norton wrote:
>>>> Squirrels obviously like a high fibre diet !
>>> Mice in a telecommunications facility are a disaster. They'll eat
>>> through fiber-optic cables and jumpers like crazy. The old telephone
>>> wires used to be lead-sheathed. Lots of squirrels and mice died from
>>> lead poisoning. The older stuff even had arsenic in it. But mostly,
>>> they will chew on stuff that has metal sheaths or pull wire in it as
>>> well as paper wrappings. We're slowly migrating to a newer style of
>>> "riser cable" (fiber) that has no metal or paper in it at all. The
>>> mice generally leave that alone as there is no reason for them to chew
>>> on it. I would say that out of the 350 facilities I am involved in, we
>>> experience a rodent problem maybe 10 times a gear. The "outside plant"
>>> guys have to deal with it all the time and we probably have an outage
>>> somewhere around the country three or four times a day. Of course,
>>> further south, we have the snakes that make our field equipment home.
>>> Fortunately, they do keep the mice away and don't chew on the wires.
>>> But they are brutal on power supplies when they short out a -48vdc
>>> main buss.
>>>
>>> Fortunately, vermin within a facility aren't huge problems, but we
>>> spend a fortune on extermination efforts. It doesn't take long for us
>>> to find them as mice will start chewing the day they arrive. Unless
>>> they are chewing on an old cable that hasn't been mined out of the
>>> facility, the moment they sever something in use, we know pretty much
>>> immediately.
>>>
>>> FTTH (Fiber to the home) has got another set of issues when it comes
>>> to critters. There are very good reasons why the industry is slow to
>>> replace copper.
>>>
>>>
>>
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