Unbelievable, but true: the most curious accidents in the life of operators
Breaking wires hurricanes, cable theft, vandalism, unfair competition, slow road workers and machinations of city services - all these are ordinary everyday life of telecom operators. And so that this was not so sad, we decided to share a selection of the most amazing accidents on the lines and the most unpredictable problems of data centers.
Judging by the comments in the Level 3 blog, our smaller brothers pose a significant danger to the wires: squirrels were guilty of 17% of all company accidents , other participants in the discussion blamed rabbits, and Australian colleagues, wombats. Someone complained about woodpeckers, someone shared links to wires with non-attractive rodent insulation.
Here is an amusing story about American-Russian relations: “Once we had a crash on the line in the north of Russia. When we asked our provider why they were repairing the cable for so long, it turned out that it was so cold in winter that the machines were not reliable transport and the installers were going to the scene of the dog sledding . ” All that is missing here is a comment about gnawing cable bears.
In 2008, Cable & Wireless was robbed. However, there was a hunt not for information, but only for scrap metal . As a result of the theft of equipment — switches and routers — the company's Watford site fell, dragging the websites of some of the company's customers, in particular, the Financial Times website.
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Verizon had previously encountered property theft - unknown persons stole 150 m of the company's copper cable , cutting off telecommunications to 400 subscribers. Some corporate clients even had to close offices due to the impossibility of making payments.
It is interesting that when British telecoms began to switch from copper cables to optical fiber, the thieves did not soon realize the difference, and the cases of digging up wires took a long time.
In addition to rodents, the communication lines of our foreign colleagues disable lovers of practicing wire shooting (Level3 speaks of 7% of accidents for this reason). On January 1, 2008, 20,000 Comcast subscribers remained unconnected, whose vozdushka was interrupted by indiscriminate firing. The company's management suggested that a certain New Year's Eve drinker thus decided to continue celebrating the holiday.
Data centers are also not insured "from the fool." A year ago, the car crashed into a power line pylon near one of Amazon’s data centers, and due to a short circuit, the data center was de-energized. When switching to backup power, something did not work and as a result, the company's customers lost the service for about an hour. The ill-fated data center suffered a power outage for the fourth time in a week.
This not only threatens Amazon - in 2007, a truck crashed into a transformer near the Rackspace Managed Hosting data center - the generator managed to start the power again, but for some reason did not start the cooling system.
I really want to mention another curious case in Florida, when the power was cut off due to the ignition of a transformer. The investigation revealed the reason - overheating from excessive load. Electricity was fueled by a nearby marijuana plantation .
And here is the story from our lands: in November last year, an unbalanced resident came out to fight with cables on the roof of her house - there was nothing left for the assembled installation team how to record the citizen's strange behavior on video and call for help. Great luck that this meeting did not end in an accident.
The topic of accidents on communication lines became the theme of April Fool's joke - the editors of the NAG.ru portal released a special message about the theft of 130 km of cable connecting the British Isles with continental Europe.
In our practice, too, which just did not happen, the workers excavated the optics with an excavator, and stole radio antennas, even seized our server room in one of the office centers (we were not allowed in, but the equipment was customized). There were separate client stories - once, instead of a router, they switched on charging for a mobile outlet - the client’s system administrator “got mad” over his colleagues together with our support engineers))
But it seems that we are not original? Colleagues operators, do you have your own stories?
Judging by the comments in the Level 3 blog, our smaller brothers pose a significant danger to the wires: squirrels were guilty of 17% of all company accidents , other participants in the discussion blamed rabbits, and Australian colleagues, wombats. Someone complained about woodpeckers, someone shared links to wires with non-attractive rodent insulation.
Here is an amusing story about American-Russian relations: “Once we had a crash on the line in the north of Russia. When we asked our provider why they were repairing the cable for so long, it turned out that it was so cold in winter that the machines were not reliable transport and the installers were going to the scene of the dog sledding . ” All that is missing here is a comment about gnawing cable bears.
In 2008, Cable & Wireless was robbed. However, there was a hunt not for information, but only for scrap metal . As a result of the theft of equipment — switches and routers — the company's Watford site fell, dragging the websites of some of the company's customers, in particular, the Financial Times website.
')
Verizon had previously encountered property theft - unknown persons stole 150 m of the company's copper cable , cutting off telecommunications to 400 subscribers. Some corporate clients even had to close offices due to the impossibility of making payments.
It is interesting that when British telecoms began to switch from copper cables to optical fiber, the thieves did not soon realize the difference, and the cases of digging up wires took a long time.
In addition to rodents, the communication lines of our foreign colleagues disable lovers of practicing wire shooting (Level3 speaks of 7% of accidents for this reason). On January 1, 2008, 20,000 Comcast subscribers remained unconnected, whose vozdushka was interrupted by indiscriminate firing. The company's management suggested that a certain New Year's Eve drinker thus decided to continue celebrating the holiday.
Data centers are also not insured "from the fool." A year ago, the car crashed into a power line pylon near one of Amazon’s data centers, and due to a short circuit, the data center was de-energized. When switching to backup power, something did not work and as a result, the company's customers lost the service for about an hour. The ill-fated data center suffered a power outage for the fourth time in a week.
This not only threatens Amazon - in 2007, a truck crashed into a transformer near the Rackspace Managed Hosting data center - the generator managed to start the power again, but for some reason did not start the cooling system.
I really want to mention another curious case in Florida, when the power was cut off due to the ignition of a transformer. The investigation revealed the reason - overheating from excessive load. Electricity was fueled by a nearby marijuana plantation .
And here is the story from our lands: in November last year, an unbalanced resident came out to fight with cables on the roof of her house - there was nothing left for the assembled installation team how to record the citizen's strange behavior on video and call for help. Great luck that this meeting did not end in an accident.
The topic of accidents on communication lines became the theme of April Fool's joke - the editors of the NAG.ru portal released a special message about the theft of 130 km of cable connecting the British Isles with continental Europe.
In our practice, too, which just did not happen, the workers excavated the optics with an excavator, and stole radio antennas, even seized our server room in one of the office centers (we were not allowed in, but the equipment was customized). There were separate client stories - once, instead of a router, they switched on charging for a mobile outlet - the client’s system administrator “got mad” over his colleagues together with our support engineers))
But it seems that we are not original? Colleagues operators, do you have your own stories?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/141526/
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