Using Google Maps to Estimate Distances Along Roads

The "My Maps" personal maps feature of Google Maps can be used to estimate distances along roads. Here's the discussion from a recent blog post.

We've also added a new tool that lets you draw lines along a road to get from point to point. This is accessed via a drop-down menu in the line tool by clicking and holding briefly anywhere on the button.

The tool calculates the best driving route between your line's vertices and automatically snaps your line to the appropriate road.

Who owns the project?

It seems obvious to me that when we deliver a service under contract to the IT organization, that the project is owned by the customer's IT organization.  At a site where we're trying to put in a diverse fiber path, however, there's contention at the customer site whether IT or Facilities owns the project.

We deal with an intermediary group at the customer's corporate level that is supposed to intercede in this sort of stuff and get to a (rational) decision, but it hasn't happened.

Net result is that the project start date is delayed.  Again.

Next step is to have Yet Another Conference Call to make sure that we're not missing some underlying context and to try to move the corporate office ot get IT to take responsibility.

If that doesn't work, maybe we can get the customer site CIO to make the decision.

Map of US Business and Industrial Sectors with Fiber Optic Links

Ran across a Washington Post article via Larry Dignan, Sam Diaz, Tom Steinert-Threlkeld about 
Sean Gorman. "[T]his George Mason University graduate student has mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them."

The Revenge of Distance: Vulnerability Analysis of Critical Information Infrastructure (PDF) by Sean P. Gorman, Laurie Schintler, Raj Kulkarni, and Roger Stough is a related paper.  Here's an extract:

This paper will focus on computer data networks and the spatial implications of their susceptibility to targeted attacks. Utilizing a database of national data carriers, simulations will be run to determine the repercussions of targeted attacks and what the relative merits of different methods of identifying critical nodes are.

Analysis of Cisco Study on Bandwidth and Latency for 42 Countries

Useful analysis by Yankee Group's Benoit Felten of Cisco's study (PDF of press release) on bandwidth and latency for 42 countries, including all of the OECD countries, in the context of current and future application requirements.

Oxford's Said School page on the topic. And a 7 MB PDF of a presentation on the findings.

Aerial Fiber Optic Build: Pole Sticking

Pole sticking means to actually go to each pole and use a measuring stick to field measure the height of each attachment on the pole and the midspan heights of the cables.

A digital survey sheet is then put together for each pole documenting the existing conditions.

Delayed fiber optic network build probably further delayed by...bike race.

No plates on road along race path.

Active Optical Cables

Pointers taken from Lightwave, Dec 08, p25

Link distance:
< 10m  Copper
10-20m 4 wavelength 10GBase-LX4 or serial 10GBase-LRM
20-100m Active optical cabling

Some vendor blurbs:
Zarlink's ZL60615 ZLynx is a fully integrated electrical-optical-electrical (EOE) cable assembly designed for interconnecting enterprise data centers and high-performance computer clusters. The optical cable delivers significant weight, flexibility and reach advantages versus copper-based cables, providing system installers with reduced installation times and improved airflow management while eliminating weight-related layout concerns.


Avago's four-channel, pluggable, parallel-fiber-optics transceiver is a high performance fiber optics module for short-range parallel multi-lane data communication and interconnect applications. This 4-channel device is capable of 10 Gbps per channel, 40 Gbps aggregate operation, and backward compatible to 5G and 2.5G per channel. The module is designed to operate over multimode fiber systems using a nominal wavelength of 850 nm. The electrical interface uses a 38 contact edge type connector. The optical interface uses an MTP® (MPO) 1x12 ribbon cable connector.

Finisar: Quadwire™ is a 40Gb/s parallel active optical cable for storage, data, and high-performance computing connectivity. It transmits error-free parallel 4x10Gb/s data over a multimode fiber (MMF) ribbon cable. Based on Finisar's vertically integrated VCSEL array technology and designed with QSFP MSA-compliant high-density connectors, these new cables are compact, lightweight, and low power. Quadwire is ideally suited for datacenter reaches up to 100m for InfiniBand QDR, 40G Ethernet, and other datacom and high-performance computing applications

Luxtera Blazar (LUX5010) is a monolithic optoelectronic Optical Active Cable assembly containing four complete fiber optic transceivers per end, each operating at data rates from 1 to 10.5 Gbps and supporting a reach up to 300 meters. This integrated cable solution provides low cost reliable transport for aggregated data rates up to 40 Gbps (4X10 Gbps). Blazar offers customers the flexibility of traditional optical modules by interfacing mechanically to systems via a standard QSFP MSA form factor. The cable is electrically compliant with the SFP+ interface supporting InfiniBand, Ethernet, Fibre Channel and other applications.