So it’s been a while.. I was really getting in to doing a post once a day, then life/work got in the way and totally blew the wind out of my sails..

Anyway.. There’s been a ton that has happened since my last post.. The most interesting thing I ran into over the last few weeks was a fiber cut for a major ISP..

For those of you that don’t know how networking is setup, there are different ways to get your data traffic around, Copper (Ethernet, Coax), Fiber and Air (WiFi, P2P Long distance Directional Wireless). A week or so back we had two clients call in and report that their internet was down.. Well, the good news was we knew their internet was down due to our in-house monitoring system (gosh is it awesome..).

So.. after an hour or two of nothing coming back up, I gave a call to their provider, in this case, was Vinakom.. While I normally have no issues with a company selling T1’s and charging 300+ a month for them, what I DO have an issue is, when you have clients in Evanston, and Elgin IL and both of their connectivity to the world goes down.. Wait.. the whole world?!

Yes. Locations >35 Miles away from each other lost connectivity, they were 100% down.. When I called the ISP was greeted promptly, but was told that one of their Fiber lines were cut, that it was minimal and would only effect a few clients.. hah wait, only a few!? While the woman answering the phone was nice, I was NOT impressed. How can you as an ISP have a single fiber cut but downplay the effects on their clients! Ugh.

Needless to say, the outage lasted 7 hours, it wasn’t until 4:30pm that the connectivity came back…

Minor Fiber cut my butt.. To this day I still believe Vinakom is only peering with one provider, this is not only stupid but an idiotic thing to do.. especially when it is your lifeblood.

Either that.. or the pipe that they used to go to the ISP hotel on 350 Cermak.. now THAT would be hilarious..

Oh well.. alls well that ends well.. I would have advised my clients to jump ship and to use the outage as a way to get out of their contract.. but in both situations they can only get ADSL or a T1.. bummer.

Well that’s all for now, i’ll make it more of a point to get on here and do more updates.. The business of IT changes all the time, and so does the amount of STUFF that we see.

Be back soon.

-b