Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
Marshall Eubanks
tme at multicasttech.com
Tue Apr 18 18:43:47 UTC 2006
Hello;
On Apr 18, 2006, at 1:53 PM, David W. Hankins wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 02:05:41PM -0400, Jared Mauch wrote:
>> Back to the original question, how well could you cope for such
>> an event? It's always challenging to think about what would happen
>> as sometimes it includes the unexpected.
>
> All the guidance suggests you're going to lose as much as 40% of your
> workforce.
>
> Well, what intrigues me, is: which 40? I don't think the virus is
> going
> to select sales, marketing, and Tech support in that order (unless
> it's
> an STD epidemic, har har). Were that the case we might actually look
> forward to such outbreaks.
The most likely disease vector is, from what I have heard, airline
travel.
Assorted people from all over are brought together for a meal (or, at
least,
bogus pretzels) in a confined space for a few hours, then released
back into
the general population.
So the NANOG and IETF crowd would probably be the first to go. Since
I travel
a lot, and to the same meetings, I can't say that that this seems
like a good
idea to me.
If any of this actually starts happening, we all may become very
interested in
video conferencing.
Regards
Marshall
>
> On the other hand, at *every* substantially sized network I've worked
> at, the Network Engineering types that might reasonably do something
> useful in such an emergency situation are generally:
>
> 1) A close-knit group, going to lunches together and cohabitating
> cubicles so as to avoid exposure to aforementioned sales,
> marketing,
> and tech support or customer service. Indeed, at a few places I
> worked, they even spent most every weekend together. For all
> the rest of the world decrying geeks as socially inept, they are
> highly efficient at social assimilation of their own kind.
>
> 2) Given a 'low desirability' office space. No windows, usually poor
> air circulation. It is often called "The Back Room" or similar, or
> is located in a space you wouldn't expect to find humans. This
> isn't
> (usually) anyone being mean: engineers seem to like dark corners,
> something about making it easier to read monitors, and locations
> that
> provide fewer interruptions due to unlikelyhood of foot traffic.
>
> 3) Better at taking care of their networks than themselves. Or at
> least,
> more willing to - too frequent is the case I see an engineer,
> hacking,
> coughing, and wheezing at his monitor, plucking away at the
> keyboard
> deep into the night.
>
> So there you have it. They're likely to come to work even though
> they're
> sick (presuming they don't know it's a lethal virus), where they
> work and
> spend all their face-to-face time in close quarters with
> recirculated air
> with the rest of the company's engineers.
>
> It's like someone intentionally optimized this function
> specifically to
> be the most pessimal.
>
> So I think it's actually highly probable that a meatspace-viral vector
> would take out the entire engineering staff at most service providers
> I've worked at if only one of them caught the bug. I have to imagine
> this is representative of other work environments. We all seem to
> share
> the same collective experience in this sense, at least the folks I've
> talked to.
>
> And that loss would be way under 40% of the total company's staff, a
> mere blip really.
>
>
> So, which 40% can you afford to lose? How likely is it that the 60%
> that's left behind will be able to do the job? Will they need step-
> by-
> step instructions so that even an untrained monkey can muddle through?
>
> --
> David W. Hankins "If you don't do it right the first time,
> Software Engineer you'll just have to do it again."
> Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. -- Jack T. Hankins
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