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Hospital Brought Down by Networking Glitch

Posted by michael on from the risks-digest dept.

hey! writes "The Boston Globe reports that Beth Israel Deaconess hospital suffered a major network outage due to a problem with spanning tree protocol. Staff had to scramble to find old paper forms that hadn't been used in six years so they could transfer vital patient records and prescriptions. Senior executives were reduced to errand runners as the hospital struggled with moving information around the campus. People who have never visited Boston's Medical Area might not appreciate the magnitude of this disaster: these teaching hospitals are huge, with campuses and staff comparable to a small college, and many, many computers. The outage lasted for days, despite Cisco engineers from around the region rushing to the hospital's aid. Although the article is short on details, the long term solution proposed apparently is to build a complete parallel network. Slashdot network engineers (armchair and professional): do you think the answer to having a massive and unreliable network is to build a second identical network?"

3 of 569 comments (clear)

  1. friggin windoze users by kraksmoka · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    that's what u get when u sign onto monopolyware. fact is, with all the fancy toys that docs use like MRI and tomography, i haven't met one that knows anything about a computer. in fact they were probably glad their stuff crashed. in fact, it was probably a setup to get the old system back! lousy docs :(

    --
    "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
  2. Re:Complexity brings bugs by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    he network at my company is quickly becoming so complex that neither I nor the admins can troubleshoot it.
    ...
    Developers suspect that there's a simpler way to do it all, but since we're not networking experts, it's just a suspicion.
    If you're not a networking expert, then you definitely are a part of the problem. That's why you can't find solutions...
  3. Ignorance is bliss, I guess. by Mordant · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Dude, you so don't know what you're talking about; Cisco is the #1 supplier of layer-3 switching gear in the world:

    http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ in dex.html

    Nor is it true that 'Cisco equipment runs a new instance of spanning tree each time a new VLAN is created'. You have to know what you're doing, of course, but it's very easy to create a very large layer-2 spanning-tree domain with a good-sized ST diameter. With good network design principles (read more on http://www.cisco.com, attend their Networkers sessions) and an understanding of how the equipment works, this sort of problem should never occur.