cross connect reliability

Thu Sep 17 21:57:09 UTC 2009

Seth Mattinen wrote:
> Michael J McCafferty wrote:
>> All,
>> 	Today I had yet another cross-connect fail at our colo provider. From
>> memory, this is the 6th cross-connect to fail while in service, in 4yrs
>> and recently there was a bad SFP on their end as well. This seemes like
>> a high failure rate to me. When I asked about the high failure rate,
>> they said that they run a lot of cables and there is a lot of jiggling
>> and wiggling... lots of chances to get bent out of whack from activity
>> near my patches and cables.
>> 	Until a few years ago my time was spent mostly in single tenant data
>> centers, and it may be true that we made fewer cabling changes and made
>> less of a ruckus when cabling... but this still seems like a pretty high
>> failure rate at the colo.
>> 	I am curious; what do you expect the average reliability of your FastE
>> or GigE copper cross-connects at a colo?
>>
> 
> Never to fail? Seriously; if you're talking about a passive connection
> (optical or electrical) like a patch panel, I'd expect it to keep going
> forever unless someone damages it.

That's truly wishful thinking, as are the assumptions that insulate it 
from damaging factors.  Nothing lasts forever.

-- 
Alex Balashov - Principal
Evariste Systems
Web     : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel     : (+1) (678) 954-0670
Direct  : (+1) (678) 954-0671