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Rats 'Cripple' NZ Web Access
An anonymous reader writes "Drat! It was the rat! Telephone, mobile and Internet access in New Zealand was disrupted over four hours after rats were found gnawing through cables. More than 100,000 customers were affected and even the country's stock exchange came to a standstill. Powerless to take action against the rats, Telecom New Zealand is seeking compensation from the electricity company it says is responsible for knocking out another pipeline which eliminated backup services. Nothing like a backup plan."
Binary independent redundancy is often not enough these days. Like this incident shows, a single backup system is not enough. You need at least four systems to have a somewhat reliable system.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Telecom New Zealand is seeking compensation from the electricity company it says is responsible for knocking out another pipeline which eliminated backup services.
Surely the electricity company put clauses in the contract excluding them from liability for failures and damages caused by things outside of their control? I take it for granted that every big company offering services of any kind have clauses for those cases.
A good example why a monopoly is vulnerable, I was @ work during the outage, & so didnt really notice so much, but I hear it was very disruptive.
What are the odds of rats chewing through a main trunk cable on the same day a local power company cutting a second main trunk?
Go Away! Not for Sale
So Telecom is seeking compenstaion for fixing this. Fair enough you might say? The irony here is that Telecom has publicly stated they will not be paying *other* businesses for their losses due to the network going down.
To put this in perspective, much of the countrys EFTPOS system went down. Much of the countrys mobile network went down. Much of the countrys DSL network went down. That means, NO electronic sales transactions, NO websites, NO email, NO mobile calls. LOTS of lost productivity and sales here.
Even the friggin stock exchange went down - the 2nd time in a few weeks due to a Telecom fault! No wonder they don't want to compensate people - even Telecom doesn't have enough money for this.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Indeed, there are economic repercussions from extra redundancy. That's where the free market steps it. It will result in redundancy equilibrium: the amount of redundancy the marketplace is willing to financially bare. In this case, there is a possibility that their two lines were not enough, and the redundancy equilibrium may now shift to three lines as a result of this systemic failure.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I lost a day's work, but they still charged me for my DSL even though I couldn't use it - you figure out who's being ripped off here!
I'm just glad terrorists didn't do this in the US. Who knows what would have happened.
The Internet was designed to survive a nuclear attack, but as implemented by the greedy idiots in control of Telecom and TelstraClear, the internet in New Zealand can't even withstand an assault by frickin rat and some clown with a power tool.
Its really embarrassing, and sad, that these corporations' policies effectively deny the public in New Zealand a robust network infrastructure - Telecom and TelstraClear purposely depeered from various internet exchanges through which they could have easily redirected traffic during this outage, rendering it a non-event, because they can't stand the idea that people might run VOIP systems, cutting into their monopoly profits.
Its just really pathetic that their action has resulted in the biggest network outage
that I can remember, and instead of realising they probably should work with other network providers to ensure the internet in New Zealand is resistant to this type of 'attack' they just want to blame the power company.
Telecom, you suck.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Fibre optic cables are relatively expensive, say $60k/km rural & rising to up to >$1m/km downtown, so beyond two diverse cables is usually justifiable only where the traffic is very large (hint- not NZ), or where geography favours it (think a mesh of cities).
The availability with two cables can be 5 9s. Overall availability depends on how risk there is (most likely risk - construction near the cable e.g. new housing estates), and how fast the operations is fixing faults. Fixing a fault may take 3 - 12 hours, and it is when Field Ops gets a bit slack in fixing things that the risk rises dramatically. Theoretically this is very rare, but these double faults do happen (think Optus Melbourne - Sydney about 5 years ago - and periodically others).
As for compensation. In general those who constructed other facilities have a responsibility to check for the presence of others external plant (gas, elec, fibre optic) - In OZ: Dial before you dig. If you don't do this, then you are liable - and be sued for at a minimum costs. If you have, and the records are off, then you are probably OK. So, in this case it may be that the electricity company or their contractor did not check for other services (or most likely checked, but stuffed up anyway!).
Actually, the number of sheep in NZ has dropped, there a more sheep per person in Australia - so they have dingo's and sheep to play with now.
...how traffic on ports other than 80 was still able to get through.
Shame uncle Tim didn't pick a more robust port.
Are you kidding? Telco's idea of a "redundant circuit" is two wires in the same conduit.
Or two conduits in the same trench. Even a conduit either side of the same (low) bridge.
Too often what gets overlooked is that a system is only as redundent as its least redundent part.
Note for moderators: "I don't get it" == "Off-Topic" evaluates as false.
Parent is quoting the lyrics to the theme song from the movie of the same name. The movie's title character is... wait for it... a rat.
The reference is made even more timely given that the song was performed by Michael Jackson, who's been in the news quite a bit lately.
Parent might or might not be be indulging in copyright infringement rather than "fair use", and might or might not be sufficiently entertaining to deserve a +1 Funny mod, but does not by any reasonable stretch of the imagination merit -1 Off-Topic.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
In Telecom, we always say to bury the fiber near the power lines. The reason is that when backhoe operators are digging, the saying goes, "If fiber's under there, dig carefully. If power's under there, call before you dig."
I can attest that it works!
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product. -- Ferenc Mantfeld