Is your ISP Influenza-ready?

David W. Hankins David_Hankins at isc.org
Wed Apr 19 16:17:12 UTC 2006


On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 11:57:01AM +0100, Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com wrote:
> That recirculated air is likely to be shared with the 
> rest of the buildings inhabitants, not just the engineers.

I'd say it's 50/50 from the buildings I've worked in.

The Commonwealth Building in Portland Oregon actually put the air
handler in the wiring closet.

  http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=122627

I know this because when it would start up at 0600, it would brown
out the electrical power.  Our equipment was on a UPS that detected
this and bridged the gap - but customer equipment on another floor
wasn't.  I was standing next to it, fancy borrowed ethernet protocol
analyzer attached to the customer line...at 0600 when they described
the problem would manifest, when the air handler startup noises
succeeded in scaring the living daylights out of me.  It didn't help
that the UPS was beeping at the same time and the protocol analyzer
was registering a flood of collisions and generally spitting out red
text and flashy lights.

As I remember the ducting, it ran from plenum, to air handler, back
to our plenum (there was no false roof in the wiring closet, it was
just sort of open where the neighboring office walls ended).

It would be good to know for certain.  And the point is kind of
moot if your company is large enough that they've centralized your
engineering groups into a single building (as has also been the
case at some places I've worked).

We had things much worse than that in the Commonwealth building
however...

> On the other hand, engineers tend to have already 
> perfected the art of working remotely. Continuity planning
> people are likely to notice that skilled technical people
> are essential to smooth operations and will kick them out
> of the office before anyone gets sick.

If I ever had one of those watching over me, he never said "You
fool!  You look like you have flu symptoms!  Go home!"  I have on
rare occaision had the converse said due to some impending
deadline...

I suspect by the time it's an epidemic it's probably too late.

-- 
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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