Entanet outages

Entanet's Sheffield and Nottingham pops have been out of action twice in the
last couple of weeks.

On each occasion, it's been caused by someone digging up a cable (fibre)
running beside a railway line.

Presumably this is a common and increasing problem with buried non-copper
cable, which isn't picked up by metal detectors? (Or is it)?

Would it be unreasonable to expect Entanet to have standby arrangements
capable of re-routeing traffic to by-pass damaged bits of their network?

Any thoughts appreciated.

--
Paul

Paul wrote:

> Entanet's Sheffield and Nottingham pops have been out of action twice in
> the last couple of weeks.

> Would it be unreasonable to expect Entanet to have standby arrangements
> capable of re-routeing traffic to by-pass damaged bits of their network?

In physical terms, some suppliers [eg BT] of fibre circuits will do 'diverse
routing' for you for an extra cost, which basically means duplicating your
fibre along a different route to limit the impact of things like this.

--
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"Paul" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message

>
> Would it be unreasonable to expect Entanet to have standby arrangements
> capable of re-routeing traffic to by-pass damaged bits of their network?
>

Yes one would expect to be looked after, but Entanet not good at best of
times, I know had to leave could not stand the varying speeds.

--
Regards,
David

Please reply to News Group

"Paul" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:gmk6he$18kq$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Entanet's Sheffield and Nottingham pops have been out of action twice in
> the last couple of weeks.
>
> On each occasion, it's been caused by someone digging up a cable (fibre)
> running beside a railway line.
>
> Presumably this is a common and increasing problem with buried non-copper
> cable, which isn't picked up by metal detectors? (Or is it)?
>
> Would it be unreasonable to expect Entanet to have standby arrangements
> capable of re-routeing traffic to by-pass damaged bits of their network?
>
> Any thoughts appreciated.<<



Those outages extended over a wide area. We're Lincolnshire and have had
the same service loss (I count 3 times in the last month or so - each one
lasting for several hours)

Enta have been very reliable during the last 14 months - let's hope that
it's just a series of unfortunate coincidences.

Paul wrote:
> Entanet's Sheffield and Nottingham pops have been out of action twice in
> the last couple of weeks.

Nottingham had a single large outage. Sheffield had two - the first of
which was the same outage as affected Nottingham. The second was
yesterday until this morning.

> On each occasion, it's been caused by someone digging up a cable (fibre)
> running beside a railway line.

Yes. The problem was a fibre cut in Global Crossing's (GX) network. It
affected multiple ISPs but Enta appear to have been particularly
affected as it seems their service from GX is deficient in that it
doesn't seem to supply diverse routing.

> Presumably this is a common and increasing problem with buried
> non-copper cable, which isn't picked up by metal detectors? (Or is it)?

GX are a major UK network operator used by many ISPs and private
networks. They run much of their fibre close alongside railway lines.

> Would it be unreasonable to expect Entanet to have standby arrangements
> capable of re-routeing traffic to by-pass damaged bits of their network?

Not unreasonable at all. It's a major failing that the network doesn't
have diverse routing built into protect against exactly this kind of thing.

Jason Clifford
--
UK Free Software Network
http://www.ukfsn.org/