generators, etc....

Sun Oct 13 00:02:50 UTC 1996

  Sure, Mike, but how do you protect against an airplane falling out of the 
sky?  or having the building that houses your generators flattened by
a runaway semi?  Or the ever present possibility that the building next
door will have a gas leak and explode?  And what about that house-sized
meteor that could come hurtling down?  

  Give me a break.  Hindsight is 20/20, it's easy to see how things could
have been avoided, but excessive paranoia can and does get in the way of
getting real work done.  Any engineer worth his salt will tell you that
100% reliability is unattainable - IMHO, these days with the technology
we work with daily as young as it is, I'm impressed with 90% uptime...

For all the effort you put into saying how you could have done better,
I sure hope you check the fuel quality on your generator and hide it
(and the rest of your ISP) in a flood-proof well ventilated bomb shelter.
I hear the goverment has an installation that might meet your standards
somewhere under Cheyenne Mountain....

  -Z

On Saturday, Oct 12, 1996, Michael Dillon writes:
>On Sat, 12 Oct 1996, Mike O'Dell wrote:
>
>> A fuel supplier accidently puts half a load of jet fuel instead of #2
>> diesel in your storage tank, which you won't find until it reloads the
>> run tank from the day tank.
>
>Take samples from the fuel tank and test them every time tanks are filled.
>
>> Floods happen and the water rises taller
>> than the 3 story snorkle on the diesels.
>
>Don't site buildings where there have been floods in the past 500 years
>and don't site buildings downstream from dams. If a waterproof building is
>built in a flood area, make sure that snorkles rise above the 500 year
>flood level.
>
>> Generators takes a direct
>> lightning strike and fries house DC power (even inside shielded
>> enclosures).  A fiber transmission system goes crazy when the control system
>> is zapped by the lightning strike on the generator.
>
>Is there any way to protect against lightning? 
>
>> A 200mph hurricane
>> gust rips a microwave system off the roof (tower and all) and throws it
>> down on the generators, crushing the exhaust system and the diesels
>> strangle. (No, I'm' not imagining these.)
>
>When siting a diesel exhaust system make sure that there are no trees,
>towers or similar things nearby that could fall on it. If in a hurricane
>area, reinforce diesel snorkels and arrange for multiple paths to get air
>in.
>
>> We all try very, very hard to make things reliable, but the world isn't
>> perfect, nor are any of us. 
>
>Yup. Now everybody else has learned from BBN's mistakes and from your
>anecdotes. Thus we make the network more reliable one step at a time.
>
>Michael Dillon                   -               ISP & Internet Consulting
>Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-604-546-3049
>http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael at memra.com
>