careful with that backhoe eugene

Last month, The Washington Post printed a good story about the "black wire" buried under Tysons.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/30/AR2009053002114.html

"A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of Tysons Corner a few years ago hit a fiber optic cable no one knew was there... Within moments, three black sport-utility vehicles drove up, a half-dozen men in suits jumped out and one said, 'You just hit our line.'"

The black wire isn't on utility maps, and if fiber-optic or in heavily insulate conduit, won't transmit any measurable signal making it impossible to detect. "Even after extensively researching land records and maps and digging more than 600 test holes to determine utility locations, it's hard to avoid accidents on a project of such complexity."

With MAE-East (one of the major Internet Exchange Points) running through the planned Dulles rail route, the amount of fiber under the construction site is of concern.

Look for an Internet outage coming to a network near you.