I Made This Network So Resilient Nothing Could Possibly Go Wrong
The Register, Monday, October 28th, 2024
As you well know, each Monday (which is today) The Register (which you're reading) brings you an instalment of Who, Me? - our reader-contributed tales of tech gone wrong. This is that very column. To tell you again would surely be redundant.
As it happens, redundancy is at the core of today's horrifying tale - which our hero, whom we shall Regomize as "Clint", referred to as his "brown trouser day." We very much hope he had a spare pair with him - redundancy, you know.
Back in his halcyon youth, Clint worked as a network admin for a credit card company. The biz worked out of two offices, right across the road from each other. They were joined by a dedicated fiber, connecting a pair of Cisco 6509 routers - very modern for the time.
Of course that meant that there was only one "path" between the two buildings. Given both offices housed huge call centers and hundreds of employees, this was seen as far too risky. A second fiber link was installed, and a second pair of 6509 routers. So if one of the paths between the two buildings failed, the other could easily handle the traffic.