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Re: I never realized so many trains derailed until my Internetkept going out

  • From: Martin Hannigan
  • Date: Sun Jan 29 17:00:53 2006


On Sun, Jan 29, 2006 at 06:37:47AM -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:
 http://www.thedenverchannel.com/technology/6490915/detail.html

 It was the third multi-day outage experienced by Comcast Western Slope
 customers. The two previous also came as a result of train derailments.

 One Aspen Comcast customer told the Aspen Times that he learned a lot
 about train derailments as result of his service interruptions.

 "I never realized so many trains derailed until my Internet kept going
 out," said Michael McVoy.
You know, I was wondering when someone was going to mention this one.
Personally I think the massive almost-3-day outage on the Qwest and GX
longhaul on this path (which of course is a critical link in the northern
path crosscountry fiber routes) was a LITTLE more important, but I guess
this is better than nothing. Before a few Comcast people bitched about
their cable modems, the only coverage of this story was about the ~100
skiers who had to take a bus back to Denver.

From what I saw the actual outage was caused by the railroad crews doing
cleanup, not the initial derailment. They also took their sweet time
removing the cars, and didn't let splicing crews into the tunnel for days.

On Sun, Jan 29, 2006 at 06:37:47AM -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:
 http://www.thedenverchannel.com/technology/6490915/detail.html

 It was the third multi-day outage experienced by Comcast Western Slope
 customers. The two previous also came as a result of train derailments.

 One Aspen Comcast customer told the Aspen Times that he learned a lot
 about train derailments as result of his service interruptions.

 "I never realized so many trains derailed until my Internet kept going
 out," said Michael McVoy.
You know, I was wondering when someone was going to mention this one.
Personally I think the massive almost-3-day outage on the Qwest and GX
longhaul on this path (which of course is a critical link in the northern
path crosscountry fiber routes) was a LITTLE more important, but I guess
this is better than nothing. Before a few Comcast people bitched about
their cable modems, the only coverage of this story was about the ~100
skiers who had to take a bus back to Denver.


They could've back doored the long haul, and it's possible they
did on different products. The local traffic would pop back if
they did depending upon network configuration since the FCP's
and CO's are still up and running. Think about it, if you can
make a phone call during a fiber cut, why can't you process an
IP packet? (I'm discussing layer 1. I'm waiting to see the preso
in Dallas to comment on anything higher :) )

http://www.qwest.com/wholesale/pcat/fcp.html

Think of the carrier network at layer 1 as meshed, even without
protect. MTTR vs. MTTP(rovision). It's likley MTTR is always
a winner even over incurred SLA losses.


-M<

--
Martin Hannigan                                (c) 617-388-2663
Renesys Corporation                            (w) 617-395-8574
Member of the Technical Staff                  Network Operations
                                              [email protected]