I never realized so many trains derailed until my Internet kept going out

Sun Jan 29 21:59:35 UTC 2006

>On Sun, Jan 29, 2006 at 06:37:47AM -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:
>>
>>
>>  http://www.thedenverchannel.com/technology/6490915/detail.html
>>
>>  It was the third multi-day outage experienced by Comcast Western Slope
>>  customers. The two previous also came as a result of train derailments.
>>
>>  One Aspen Comcast customer told the Aspen Times that he learned a lot
>>  about train derailments as result of his service interruptions.
>>
>>  "I never realized so many trains derailed until my Internet kept going
>>  out," said Michael McVoy.
>
>You know, I was wondering when someone was going to mention this one.
>Personally I think the massive almost-3-day outage on the Qwest and GX
>longhaul on this path (which of course is a critical link in the northern
>path crosscountry fiber routes) was a LITTLE more important, but I guess
>this is better than nothing. Before a few Comcast people bitched about
>their cable modems, the only coverage of this story was about the ~100
>skiers who had to take a bus back to Denver.
>
>>From what I saw the actual outage was caused by the railroad crews doing
>cleanup, not the initial derailment. They also took their sweet time
>removing the cars, and didn't let splicing crews into the tunnel for days.

>On Sun, Jan 29, 2006 at 06:37:47AM -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:
>>
>>
>>  http://www.thedenverchannel.com/technology/6490915/detail.html
>>
>>  It was the third multi-day outage experienced by Comcast Western Slope
>>  customers. The two previous also came as a result of train derailments.
>>
>>  One Aspen Comcast customer told the Aspen Times that he learned a lot
>>  about train derailments as result of his service interruptions.
>>
>>  "I never realized so many trains derailed until my Internet kept going
>>  out," said Michael McVoy.
>
>You know, I was wondering when someone was going to mention this one.
>Personally I think the massive almost-3-day outage on the Qwest and GX
>longhaul on this path (which of course is a critical link in the northern
>path crosscountry fiber routes) was a LITTLE more important, but I guess
>this is better than nothing. Before a few Comcast people bitched about
>their cable modems, the only coverage of this story was about the ~100
>skiers who had to take a bus back to Denver.
>

They could've back doored the long haul, and it's possible they
did on different products. The local traffic would pop back if
they did depending upon network configuration since the FCP's
and CO's are still up and running. Think about it, if you can
make a phone call during a fiber cut, why can't you process an
IP packet? (I'm discussing layer 1. I'm waiting to see the preso
in Dallas to comment on anything higher :) )

http://www.qwest.com/wholesale/pcat/fcp.html

Think of the carrier network at layer 1 as meshed, even without
protect. MTTR vs. MTTP(rovision). It's likley MTTR is always
a winner even over incurred SLA losses.

-M<

-- 
Martin Hannigan                                (c) 617-388-2663
Renesys Corporation                            (w) 617-395-8574
Member of the Technical Staff                  Network Operations
                                               hannigan at renesys.com