Major Internet and Mobile Phone Outage in Santa Cruz and South Bay

Having just spent a few years in the datacenter infrastructure space I can’t help but comment on the recent internet and mobile phone outage effecting Santa Cruz and the South Bay all day.  What has been said all day from news sources is that 4 pairs of fiber were cut from a single carrier (AT&T) on a single route in a single location in the south bay.

IMHO, this  alone SHOULD NOT have caused the outage that occurred. Other cuts must have been made in at least 1 other, if not multiple locations to have caused the outage that occurred.

This being said, the unfortunately reality is the internet is nowhere near as “redundant” or secure as we would like to believe it is.  A pissed off employee within a datacenter or a freak incident with a large cooling system within a datacenter can cause massive outages, and does more often than most people even realize.

Highly recommend those who are reliant on the internet and/or their phone for their day to day income become as informed as possible as to the infrastructure and systems that allow them to do what they do.  Wikipedia in fact is a great resource:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datacenter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_transit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Service_Providers

This being said, as we’re all reliant on water and power, the same exact comments go for being engaged and informed about your local electrical grids and water distribution systems!