Internet Access Via Pneumatic Tubes -- Whooosh!

selectspec writes: "Old pnuematic tubes used for delivering mail in 19th century cities like New York possibly could be used as piping to hold new fiber lines. Accoding to this nytimes article the tubes were used to deliver mail through New York City via pressurized air in 1897. Now, an entrepreneur wants to use the tubes instead of laying new pipes which would cost upwards of 100 million dollars a mile in New York City." Pneumatic tubes have been ahead of their time for over a century, so it's cool to see some of their inherent latency problems can be overcome by creative re-use.

Re:Reduce, re-use, recycle

What's interesting is that a lot of old infrastructure has been used to lay fiber-optic cable in cities.

Because fiber-optic cables tend to be much more tolerant of bad external conditions than copper cables, it's small wonder why old sewage systems and the old pneumatic tubes mentioned in the article are being used to run fiber-optic lines. After all, many railroads made a ton of money using their right-of-way land to run copper and later fiber-optic lines (Southern Pacific was famous for doing this--that's how the modern Sprint communications company was born).

Re:paint it black

To spend money on pnuematic tubing is a complete scam and waste. First off it isn't going to send the light down a fiber line any faster than any other tube, so it would be senseless to go with pnuematic tubing as opposed to plain old PVC tubes from your local hardward store.

They mention that back in 18xx they tested the system by sending a live cat in a tube. I wonder what would happen if we sent a troll through the system? Hopefully there would be plenty of breaks and obstructions.

BTW - just for clarification, idiot, they are using the *existing* tubes in New York City, where it is nearly impossible to run any new lines... the city is built layer upon layer upon layer, and nobody is really sure what does what underground. The classic restaurant in New York has a bathroom that is in the corner, go down the stairs, 100 feet down a cooridor, down some more stairs, make a right, 50 feet across, and the bathroom is five feet up.

Now picture a few square miles worth of these labrythine tunnels in 3D, with sewer, subway and other services running between them, and you'll realize how much easier it is to use existing pipes than try to go through what is necessary to figure out who to pay, who has rights and where you should dig to lay new lines.

--
Evan

Reduce, re-use, recycle

Makes sense. Why not reuse? People seem to be making remarkable efforts with domestic recycling and waste management, it only makes sense that governments do the same -- and it will cost taxpayers less money in the process!

Dumb idea

Here's an idea: we build pyramids instead of graves. Sure it will cost the taxpayers and businesses more, but think of the extra money we can pay to the workers!

There's plenty of work for contractors to do in NYC, and the pipes can be exposed and repaired later. Give me a break!

And what do you think the difference between an old,rusty iron isulator for the fiber cable is and a new, shiny plastic one? Neither will be truly functional, just space holders to keep the other stuff out of the fiber system.

-Ben

Re:RFC 1149

For those who haven't guessed yet, in this usage "CPIP" stands for "Compressed Pidgeon In Pipe"

Code commentary is like sex.
If it's good, it's VERY good.

Re:Sounds cool, but some problems...

Firstly, are those tubes still in good condition? They've been unused for decades--they might be full of rainwater, sewage, etc.

The expensive bit is digging trenches to lay new ducting, getting rainwater/sewage out of some old stuff costs far less.

Secondly, would the tubes have to be converted in any way at all?

Typically underground fibre is fed through tubes around 2mm internal bore (or rather blown through with compressed air). Several of these are bundled together in a tough sheath then fed through ducting. The tubes simply serve as ducting, only issue is that they are probably a different size from modern ductwork.

Thirdly, are the tubes still readily accessible? Right now, I'm thinking of the old subway tunnels in the District of Columbia and New York City. Some of them are still down there, but the entrances/exits have long been sealed.

Boring a shaft could easily be cheaper than digging a trench over the same distance...

Brazil!

The first thing I thought of, when reading the story, was Terry Gilliam's movie, "Brazil."

When will we have Robert de Niro zip-lining into people's apartments to fix their networks without a 27B-6?

Pneumatic Pnetwork Pneomenclature

This reminds me somewhat of the first implementation of the avian IP network discussed earlier in this forum.

There seems to be a great deal of potential for using pneumatic tubes as part of IP network.

Right off I can think of one problem though. If I were to load my tube with a nonstandard payload, of say a bunch of "holes" (the variety that is produced by a 3-ring punch) or the ever favorite chads then my recipient would likely suffer from packet fragmentation in a big way.

Speed!

Each container was labeled to indicate the destination of its contents. Special delivery letters were delivered within one hour; regular letters within three.

Thinking about this, I realized that this compares favorably with email, in that between meetings, and so on, the response times are similar. This puts a new light on the commerce of the early 20th century. However:

"the pneumatic service began to pale next to the new technology of the motor-wagon, which could deliver mail two to three times faster than a horse-drawn cart with equal or greater volume and more than 10 times the volume of a pneumatic tube, while only slightly slower."

Now that has gone to hell in a handbasket since then.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

internet in the tubes...

pneumatic tubes...so in a sense, someone who gets their access thru them could say their internet really sucks? or would that be blows . . .

. . .

RFC 1149

Wow! Pneumatic tubes must be exactly what The RFC 1149 project [linux.no] needs. Imagine using these for LAN and corporate networks - add a few hundred pigeons, a barrel of grease and voila! High-speed CPIP communication.

Re:Screwed

Don't you think that he should have the right to use this if he wants, considering he discovered it?

Well that depends. Suppose I visit your house and I find a long-forgotten baseball card in your basement which turns out to be worth several thousand dollars.

I'd want to say 'finders keepers', but you'd argue that it's your property, and it was found on your property. The fact that you forgot that you had it has no impact on who rightfully owns this.

Likewise, your government spent your tax dollars to build that system. It goes through government-owned land. Even if it was built a century ago, it doesn't change the fact that they paid for, and thus it's their right to decide what to do with it.

In any case, they should let the guy use it, but I don't think it's right to say that they're screwing him because they're not letting him use their stuff for free.

Use the tubes to deliver pizzas!

Stuffing em full of wires is useless, lets use em to deliver junk people buy online. Hold on, I'm going to upload you a donut.