Every once in a while the physical world reminds us that, no matter how immersed we are in the virtual world, we have not left meat, bone, steel, and fire behind.

Viz: Question: When can a cigarette take down the Internet? Also, the Boston Herald's reporting on the Longfellow Bridge fire.

Last, from management at the Connecticut Education Network:

This evening at about 8:40 PM we experienced an outage with CEN’s links to Internet2. It appears to be a fire under a bridge in Boston through which the fiber cable passes. This has severed the link CEN uses to Boston and the Northern Crossroad’s link to Internet2. The first story available on this is at http://wbztv.com/topstories/local_story_121202334.html . Based on communications with the Internet2 NOC, we believe this is actually Level(3)’s main artery through New England and is likely effecting many customers. The earliest estimates on restoration of services are 1-2 days, however experience says estimates sometimes are extra long in the early moments of an outage of this magnitude. We are in contact with the NOX, Level(3), UMass and Internet2 and are correlating reports and tracking this event...