Depending on if the have a primary or "virtual" POP in Pittsburgh, a single circuit can pull the entire VPOP down. From what I understand of their network, they backhaul all circuits of a VPOP to a "real" pop. So if they have a hardware, port or circuit failure on the single channelized circuit, everything is gone. Also since they bring most of their circuits (especially T-1) over a CT3, any hiccup in that will cause a problem too. I think the "entire Pittsburgh" network going down may be a function of a small number of total circuits rather than a "massive failure" of infrastructure equipment or services. My knowledge of Savvis is possibly dated and this is meant in no way as a compliment or criticism of their network topology or operations. Deepak Jain AiNET On Mon, 7 Aug 2000, deeann mikula wrote:
pgh. lost savvis again around 6pm EDT. i called then, and got a "don't really know yet..." response from their noc.
after getting the msg below (8pm EDT), i called them back, and the noc tech told me that they are working at it from 2 angles, one group on the possibility of an equiptment failure and another group working with an at&t tech on the possibility that the problem lies with them. he said he "seems like" it might be a re-occurence of y'days problem, but it was too soon to tell and he hadn't gotten an official confirmation that it was ok to say that yet.
IMHO, i think their handling of this (emails and prompt call backs, and informed and cheerful phone staff) has been great (from a customer support viewpoint.) now if they could just get us back up again... 3 separate several hour outages of the complete pgh. network is just unacceptable. :( [8am-2pm sunday, 4am-6am monday and 6pm-? monday.]
just my update for all those of pgh net-admins, and anyone else who cares.
deeann m.m. mikula director of operations
telerama public access internet http://www.telerama.com
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 18:23:15 -0500 (CDT) From: <snipped, from savvis noc>
Subject: NOTIFICATION OF EMERGENCY OUTAGE
At 8/7/2000 17:28:33 CST, we experienced an outage in our ATM and Frame Relay switches in Pittsburgh. We have escalated this issue to the highest levels in Savvis, and have also opened tickets with carriers. If you have any questions or concerns, please call the NCC at (888) 638-6771 and reference ticket 322411.