North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: BBN outage

  • From: Patrick J. Chicas
  • Date: Tue Oct 15 06:11:37 1996

On Mon, 14 Oct 1996, Michael Dillon wrote:

> On Mon, 14 Oct 1996, Patrick J. Chicas wrote:
> 
> Somone mentioned that they had seen Stanfords generator plant and it was
> all dusty. Is it possible that no one knew how the transfer switch worked
> or possibly no one knew that it had a manual override? Is there anyone
> close enough to Stanford to check up on this stuff?

The message led me to believe that the generator was not attached to the
transfer switch. Also, almost all transfer switches have a manual handle
on the front that levers the contacts inside the switch box. The automatic
portion is commonly a very, very large relay type winding that moves the
same contacts.

It would be hard to imagine that the rodent did it's thing on the transfer
switch itself which should be upstream from the buildings, main AC
switchgear. Referencing the messages so far, I am led to believe that the
main switch gear smoked and the generator was not attached to any piece of
transfer switch gear.

It's also tough to comprehend why BBN didn't upgrade the hub after
purchase. It's just not that much of a capital expense for them to do so.

I'll bet they make changes now on the order of a dedicated generator and
UPS or battery plant for their Servers, Routers and Terminal equipment.

The stuff just isn't that expensive. As an example; I just had
our third Lorain DC-AC 10kva inverter installed. The total price, turn key
was under $13,000 with AC runs into the equipment areas.

BIG APC UPS's with loads of batteries are not much more and you can plug
them in the wall. 

Regards

 Patrick J. Chicas
 Email: [email protected]
 URL: http://www.Off-Road.com 
 --------------------------------
 The Off-Road Center of The 'Net!
 


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -