[AusNOG] Solar flare

[Jake Anderson]

On 03/08/2012 09:26 PM, Paul Brooks wrote:
> On 8/03/2012 8:54 PM, Jacob Gardiner wrote:
>> I've had the same issue in the past. About 5 minutes after it would start to rain,
>> speed would drop and sometimes would lose sync completely.
> At the risk of stating the obvious - water mixing with metallic electrical conductors
> tend to do that, quite apart from the corrosion issue long-term.
>
> Glass fibres are a bit more inert - thats why we make windows out of the stuff.
>
> P.
Oh they are inert sure, the water wont chemically attack the glass. 
Though if there are any coatings I can see it bothering them and it may 
not do the sheathing much good when the rain washes over a driveway/road 
picks up a whole bunch of oil, petrol and other nasties then sits in a 
pit for a few days before evaporating, but these problems are not unique 
to glass.

My concern is given the refractive index of glass is ~1.5 and water is 
~1.3 I can see significant attenuation of the signal happening.
I'm only working on theoretical assumptions here, I'd really like to 
hear from people who know first hand.
If you have a bunch of splices in a pit that is under water (perhaps 
several meters ;->) is water getting into the splice an issue?

I know it should never happen and given the cost of putting a fibre line 
in these days I'm sure allot of care is given to each join but my 
concern is mainly due to the shear number of houses being serviced, 
people get careless, and a 1% failure rate over 5 years becomes a big deal.