From: "George William Herbert" <gherbert@retro.com> Subject: Re: Points of Failure (was Re: National infrastructure asset)
Part of the insidiousness of all this is that currently there is insufficient information available to a telco line end user to properly plan for that sort of loss.
I was able to procure extremely detailed route information from multiple CLECs and Verizon in the Boston area when researching both dark fiber and SONET purchases, up to and including street-level maps. Long-haul providers also are able to provide detailed route information, if you're willing to ask -- the key is to be an educated buyer.
On top of that, none of these facilities are sufficiently hardened. What takes a backhoe operator ten minutes by accident would be no more than an hours work by hand of a sufficiently educated attacker. (snip) Longer term, we all need to think about multi-level hardening of facilities and connectivity to avoid "cheap kills" due to accident or malicious attack.
Before I would jump to harden all telecom and colo facilities to physical attack or mishap, I'd at least examine whether it was cheaper and easier to design my network assuming that any given facility can / will go away, either short- or long-term. -travis