Hunting for North Korean Fiber Optic Cables

Do those small utility boxes alongside the tracks make sense for fiber optic? I expected things like that to be larger, if only because fiber has a minimum bend radius.

Edit: Good article though, I enjoyed it a lot.

The min bend radius isn’t that large in my experience. On the order of 10cm IIRC, possibly even less.

Much smaller than that, some might even say a utility box is overkill: https://old.reddit.com/r/techsupportgore/comments/nvwcuh/the...

Fiber’s perfectly happy being joined in 12” by 16” boxes for small runs. The terminal box in my garage has a few loops and is more like 6” x 8”.

https://www.seeclearfield.com/fiber-optic-wall-box/metal-wal...

Even less is correct: outdoor fibers (G.652.D) have a minimum bend radius of about 30mm. The indoor counterpart (G.657.A1 and A2) have 10mm and 7.5mm.

Those are more of a technically no?

Like I have fiber to the house and you really need to pinch it and whatnot to cause an internet outage.

The larger cables tend to have strength members with higher physical bend radius restrictions, i.e. you can't bend the steel or kevlar elements that tightly without breaking things.

A small bend radius means it can have a tight bend.

A large bend radius means it has to be a big bend.

A 7.5mm bend radius is really small. You can bend that stuff pretty tight before you create a problem.

Railroad minimum bend radius is orders of magnitude bigger than fiber's.