Re: cross connect reliability

[Seth Mattinen <sethm () rollernet us>]

Alex Balashov wrote:
> Seth Mattinen wrote:
> > Michael J McCafferty wrote:
> > > All,
> > >     Today I had yet another cross-connect fail at our colo provider.
> > > From
> > > memory, this is the 6th cross-connect to fail while in service, in 4yrs
> > > and recently there was a bad SFP on their end as well. This seemes like
> > > a high failure rate to me. When I asked about the high failure rate,
> > > they said that they run a lot of cables and there is a lot of jiggling
> > > and wiggling... lots of chances to get bent out of whack from activity
> > > near my patches and cables.
> > >     Until a few years ago my time was spent mostly in single tenant data
> > > centers, and it may be true that we made fewer cabling changes and made
> > > less of a ruckus when cabling... but this still seems like a pretty high
> > > failure rate at the colo.
> > >     I am curious; what do you expect the average reliability of your
> > > FastE
> > > or GigE copper cross-connects at a colo?
> >
> > Never to fail? Seriously; if you're talking about a passive connection
> > (optical or electrical) like a patch panel, I'd expect it to keep going
> > forever unless someone damages it.
>
> That's truly wishful thinking, as are the assumptions that insulate it
> from damaging factors.  Nothing lasts forever.

What the OP is describing is abnormally high in my view.

Based purely on my own personal experience, the structured wiring in my
parent's house I put in in the mid 90's has never suffered a failure, is
still in use today, and it's in a residential environment with dogs and
cats. I'd expect a properly managed environment to fare at least as good
as that.

~Seth