Fatty Pipes with Y2K problem - OT humor

Sean Donelan SEAN at SDG.DRA.COM
Fri Jun 18 02:15:33 UTC 1999


rjoffe at centergate.COM (Rodney Joffe) writes:
>We have had a significant pipe problem at our Sherman Oaks facility in
>Los Angeles as a result of a Y2K test failure :-) The staff is currently
>off-line recovering! Seriously.
>
>Sean, one for your book :-)
>
>http://www.cbs2.com/news/stories/news-990617-081237.html

I smell a problem :-)  But hardly the first.  The best one I've heard
so far was the entire country of Fiji went off-line a few weeks ago when
the telco was conducting their Y2K test.

Even if you think everything will work correctly, having a contigency
plan is still a good idea.  BTW, President Clinton signed an executive
order setting up the US Y2K coordination center I spoke about at NANOG
this week.  But guess what, the vendor of the conference bridge the NCS
uses doesn't have a Y2K readiness statement on their web page.

And speaking of that, to bring this on topic:
NOC communications, and communicating during contigency operations.

During the recent virus/worm scare an old problem has re-appeared.  For
a variety of reasons some organizations feel the best response to these
virus/worms is to pull up the drawbridges and shut-off their network
connections each time a new one makes the rounds.  This also happened
during the "Morris" Worm ten years ago, and one of the reasons why BBN
was tasked with creating the Network Manager's Phonebook.  

I can't ask you to go against your corporate security people. But consider
planning how to keep a NOC contact up and running when you feel you must
disconnect the rest of your corporate or agency network.  If you pull the
plug on your main (only?) mail server, how do you redirect your NOC mail?
The government backbone networks seemed to do this more than commercial
networks, but the principle applies to both.
-- 
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
  Affiliation given for identification not representation




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