Breaking the Glass: Fragile Infrastructure
Recent news about at least two major fiber cuts in California have been stirring thoughts about how fragile the our network infrastructure really can be. These cuts have some very obvious consequences, such as wide spread internet outages that can have a major impact on many businesses. Many other services usually transition to fiber optic cable for their long-haul transit. The result in this particular case is that some areas are sans cell phone, land line, and emergency (911) services! Being without voice, video and data services today is the equivalent of being cut off from the rest of the world!
What concerns me the most is that were no backup links to keep mission critical services up and running in this case. From a networking perspective we design our networks to have multiple diverse paths in an attempt to avoid such outages. We also implement disaster recovery (DR) plans in the event that our best laid engineering plans are thwarted.
One question to answer is where does the responsibility lie with respect to maintaining emergency services in such a situation? Is it the responsibility of the carrier that is moving the packets to ensure that in the event of a fiber cut, packets deemed mission critical have an alternate route? It is my opinion that the responsibility for ensuring emergency service are not effected by fiber cuts lies with the local government. Just as it is the responsibility of a company to maintain redundant paths in the event that their primary service provider fails to meet their SLA.
From a business perspective, the company has the right to file for penalties according to their network agreement when their service provider does not meet their SLA, however the onus lies with the company to ensure business functions can continue when the service provider has a failure. I feel this same principal can extend to local governments and the emergency services they provide.
The best way to prevent mistakes in the future is to learn from those in the past. With any luck, this incident will bring some of these concerns into the public light so that they may be addressesed.
Well said