North American Network Operators Group

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

Re: What is the limit? (was RE: multi-homing fixes)

  • From: Vadim Antonov
  • Date: Thu Aug 30 18:55:42 2001

Actually, talking about water/electricity interaction in refrigerators,
lab equipment, etc, misses the very simple point - a probability of a leak
is proportional (as a good approximation :) to the number of moveable
components (PCBs, connectors, etc) in the system.  In a typical CO it's
tens or hundreds of thousands.

--vadim

PS.	Water is not a good coolant, and even distilled and deionized
        water tends to pick ions from metal parts rather quickly.  Spirits
        are flammable;  CFCs are bad for environment.  There's also an
        issue of toxicity.

	Of course, everything is doable, but what is the cost?
        Off-the-shelf components are all designed for air cooling.
	Switching to liquid cooling means a lot of custom stuff; which is
	expensive and which takes a long time to design and manufacture.

PPS	It is not voltage which matters, it's current :)  Even if leaks do
        not cause shorts the moisture accumulation may corrode parts
        leading to mechanical shorts, it also may cause excessive 
        cross-talk. Sporadically malfunctioning equipment is much worse
        than flat-out burned out.

PPS 	Finally, getting your hands wet makes your changes to get killed
        by electricity _much_ higher. 48V won't do you any harm if your
        hands are dry, it may kill if they're wet.