5.5 Hours of Downtime Due to Fiber Cut

Just in case you might have noticed, this blog was down for a little over five hours yesterday. Well I found the culprit and it was no other than the VA department of transportation! Yes, I remember them, they're the same folks who are still attempting to collect property taxes for my cars despite having left the state years ago.

The moral of the story here though is this. Despite having multiple redundant circuits and miles of protected fiber linked to your datacenter, its only as good as the weakest link. That is the link that goes into your building . How many network provides make sure that there are more than one physical link comming from a different location? This detail is usually glossed over when they sell you their high redundancy data center.

The situation was so bad that the folks at Zettai, my provider, set up a blog to keep us updated of the situation.