nanog mailing list archives
Re: Fiber cut in SF area
From: Matthew Petach <mpetach () netflight com>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:01:36 -0700
On 4/13/09, George William Herbert <gherbert () retro com> wrote:
Matthew Petach wrote: >> George William Herbert <gherbert () retro com> wrote: >> Matthew Petach writes:
[much material snipped in the interests of saving precious electron resources...]
This was all in one geographical area. Diversity out of area will get you around single points like that, if you know the overall topology of the fiber networks around the US and chose locations carefully. But even that won't protect you against common mode vendor hardware failures, or a largescale BGP outage, or the routing chaos that comes with a very serious regional net outage (exchange points, major undersea cable cuts, etc).... There may be 4 or 5 nines, but the 1 at the end has your name on it.
Ultimately, I think a .sig line I saw years back summed it up very succinctly: "Earth is a single point of failure." Below that, you're right, we're all just quibbling about which digits to put to the right of the decimal point. If the entire west coast of the US drops into the ocean, yes, having my data backed up on different continents will help; but I'll be swimming with the sharks at that point, and won't really be able to care much, so the extent of my disaster planning tends to peter out around the point where entire states disappear, and most definitely doesn't even wander into the realm of entire continents getting cut off, or the planet getting incinerated in a massive solar flare. Fundamentally, though, I think it's actually good we have outages periodically; they help keep us employed. When networks run too smoothly, management tends to look upon us as unnecessary overhead that can be trimmed back during the next round of layoffs. The more they realize we're the only bulwark against the impending forces of chaos you mentioned above, the less likely they are to trim us off the payroll. Matt Note--tongue was firmly planted in cheek; no slight was intended against those who may have lost jobs recently; post was intended for humourous consumption only; any resemblence to useful content was purely coincidental and not condoned by any present or past employer. Repeated exposure may be habit forming. Do not read while operating heavy machinery.
Current thread:
- RE: Fiber cut in SF area, (continued)
- RE: Fiber cut in SF area Mikael Abrahamsson (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area Andy Ringsmuth (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area Dorn Hetzel (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area Dorn Hetzel (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area Justin M. Streiner (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area joel . mercado (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area Matthew Petach (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area George William Herbert (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area Matthew Petach (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area George William Herbert (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area Matthew Petach (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area Christopher Hart (Apr 13)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area Jorge Amodio (Apr 14)
- RE: Fiber cut in SF area Murphy, Jay, DOH (Apr 14)
- Re: Fiber cut in SF area Jorge Amodio (Apr 14)
- RE: Fiber cut in SF area Murphy, Jay, DOH (Apr 14)
- RE: Fiber cut in SF area Peter Beckman (Apr 13)
- RE: Fiber cut in SF area chris.ranch (Apr 13)
- RE: Fiber cut in SF area Peter Beckman (Apr 13)
- RE: Fiber cut in SF area chris.ranch (Apr 13)
- RE: Fiber cut in SF area Peter Beckman (Apr 13)