BGP Problem on 04/16/2007

Thu Apr 19 16:00:53 UTC 2007

On Apr 19, 2007, at 10:17 AM, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:

>
>
> With certain susceptible Sun CPUs which were popular during the last
> sunspot maxima, this was actually demonstrably true (and acknowledged
> by Sun), so don't laugh too hard.

Yup, Sandia National Labs made a radiation hardened Pentium and, as  
far as I remember, was working on a hardened SPARC -- there was also  
some work done (AFAIR on PPC) whereby 3 processors would run the same  
instructions and vote on the output...

>
>                                         ---rob
>
> Leigh Porter <leigh.porter at ukbroadband.com> writes:
>
>> Somebody form a certain large network vendor actually blamed problems
>> with their kit on cosmic rays causing memory corruption...

Oh, not just "somebody" -- a certain large vendor has many, many  
references to it -- and I have received it as a explanation for  
random reloads -- believe me, trying to tell an irate customer / PHB  
that the reason that his "mission critical" circuit bounced was  
because of cosmic rays is No Fun(tm). Hmmm.. Isn't this the same  
vendor that now has a router sitting on a satellite ?!  ;-)

There was also an issue where one of the large manufacturers of  
(binary) CAMs received a batch of polyimide that was contaminated  
with an alpa-emitter (for some reason thorium oxide springs to mind)  
and their quality control didn't catch it... As far as I know the  
problem was identified before any products with the CAMs were  
shipped, but I had an order held up while the vendor tried to source  
alternate parts...

>>
>> --
>> Leigh Porter
>>
>> Jay Hennigan wrote:
>>>
>>> Andre Oppermann wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Audie Onibala wrote:
>>>>> Yesterday on 04/16/07 between 3:00 - 3:45 PM we had sporadic
>>>>> Internet problem.  Our ISP's are Sprint and Qwest.
>>>>
>>>> Around that time there was quite a bit sunspot activity and the  
>>>> moon
>>>> had an unusual position too.  The NOC contacts of your ISP's  
>>>> probably
>>>> may be of more specific help.  But make sure to ask them for their
>>>> networks SPF (sunspot protection factor).  That's an important  
>>>> metric
>>>> to qualify their network reliability.
>>>
>>> Are you sure it was sunspots?  My NOC contacts were seeing  
>>> substantial
>>> memory corruption due to cosmic rays.
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - jay at impulse.net
>>> Impulse Internet Service  -  http://www.impulse.net/
>>> Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV
>

--
After you'd known Christine for any length of time, you found  
yourself fighting a desire to look into her ear to see if you could  
spot daylight coming the other way.

     -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade)t