Re: OUTAGE: DACS failure in USWEST/spokane
SEAN@dra.COM (Sean Donelan) writes:
This morning USWEST lost a DACS serving Spokane (and other places in Washington State).
Now the story starts changing. The telco is now saying it was a power outage, and the standby power failed at the central office. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation
Unnamed Administration sources reported that Sean Donelan said:
Now the story starts changing. The telco is now saying it was a power outage, and the standby power failed at the central office.
I have often wondered how vigilant of late the LEC's are in maintaining their standby power systems. It takes manpower & money to keep on top of same [In general, it should be run under some load for an hour, and that should be done once a ~week/month.]. Seeing as how they can't keep other slots filled.... Further, at one time the spec called for the battery plant to last long enough for a truck-mounted generator to get there when the in-place unit bits the onion. Wonder if that is still true.... -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
On Sun, 27 Dec 1998, David Lesher wrote:
I have often wondered how vigilant of late the LEC's are in maintaining their standby power systems. It takes manpower & money to keep on top of same [In general, it should be run under some load for an hour, and that should be done once a ~week/month.]. Seeing as how they can't keep other slots filled....
I had have the most problem with Bell Atlantic. I remember one day when our building called us and said they were cutting the power to the building for 12 - 18 hours. I had a generator, but was worried about my two primary providers MFS and Bell Atlantic. I called them about 8 hours before the cut and asked them to be ready. MFS said no problem and Bell Atlantic said "Don't worry our equipment is powered by the fiber". Well MFS showed up with a small generator, but found out there was no way to connect it. They asked if I could help and I ended up hardwiring it directly to their main pannel. After about 10 min their generator died and I ended up connecting them to my generator. Bell Atlantic's batteries died about 30 min after the power was cut (so much for 8 hours) and when I called them up they said sorry we can't send someone out because there is no generator connection for that building. After yelling at as many people as I could I ended up patching my generator into their pannel to get them back up (later got yelled at, but my customers were happy. So I ended up not only powering my hardware, but MFS and Bell Atlantic's hardware as well. I don't know why more RBOCs don't test their power systems. In most of the major ISP power problems I have been involved with the outages were not because of the ISP, but because of the RBOC. Some of the major CO are checked, but there are a vast number of systems that have never been checked since they were installed. If you are expecting a power outage or not, it is a good idea to force your providers to prove that they test and maintain their power systems. You can have the best systems in the world, but if your fiber providers systems are down you are out of luck. One of the things I did at NetRail was to try to get all our fiber providers to place their hardware in our colo and allow us to provide them power. This is one way to make sure that at least one end is up to spec. -- Check out the new CLEC mailing list at http://www.robotics.net/clec
<> Nathan Stratton Telecom & ISP Consulting www.robotics.net nathan@robotics.net
-- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
A good system that I found to work for an institution I once wored for -- every Tuesday at around 1:00pm (a light load), the diesel system would be kicked in for 10 to 15 minutes. It was a frequent enough schedule to detect any problems far in advance for repair. -ravi
On Mon, 28 Dec 1998, Ravi Pina wrote:
A good system that I found to work for an institution I once wored for -- every Tuesday at around 1:00pm (a light load), the diesel system would be kicked in for 10 to 15 minutes. It was a frequent enough schedule to detect any problems far in advance for repair.
Right, but how to you make sure your providers do the same thing? I would think that just checking your batteries every few years would not be that hard, but many RBOCs have problems with this in many service areas. -- Check out the new CLEC mailing list at http://www.robotics.net/clec
<> Nathan Stratton Telecom & ISP Consulting www.robotics.net nathan@robotics.net
-ravi
On Sun, 27 Dec 1998, Sean Donelan wrote:
SEAN@dra.COM (Sean Donelan) writes:
This morning USWEST lost a DACS serving Spokane (and other places in Washington State).
Now the story starts changing. The telco is now saying it was ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is what I see a lot. It is hard for me to tell if it is really a DACS problem or a scapegoat reason. They use DACS problems the same as a DS-3 cut. Just to give a fast (but many times untrue) RFO so they can quickly close their ticket. (It just causes me to push more for the actual one) scott
participants (5)
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David Lesher -
Nathan Stratton -
Ravi Pina -
scott w -
Sean Donelan