Wayward Cables

["William Allen Simpson" <bsimpson () morningstar com>]

> From: "Forrest W. Christian" <forrestc () imach com>
> That is until I had an outage last week caused by a Fiber Cut in
> Texas.  Now I'm mad.  I supposedly have a line from Helena to Seattle
> to California which somehow goes through Texas.

Reminds me of when the entire NSFnet went down because both the primary
and backup links (purchased deliberately to be separate) coming to the
NSF NOC were cut -- far to the north, on supposedly southeast and
southwest bound links!  Needless to say, the two links weren't supposed
to go over the same fiber (by definition), and going by way of Midland
was a long way out of the way!  (Not as far as Texas, though.)

Maybe every contract needs a clear picture of where the links are
actually located!

What can NANOG, as a group, do about this problem?  Do we need to form
yet another consortium to coordinate link purchases for NA?  Might save
some money, too....

Bill.Simpson () um cc umich edu
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