All our virtual worlds are built on the physical

StuartYeates — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 12:10:46 -0500

On Monday, 26 June a pair of fibre optic cables were cut, apparently deliberately. While the motivations appear unclear, the action caused a loss of cable TV coverage on the telewest network an hour before a very significant game in the football (soccer) world cup. Due to a recent series of takeovers, telewest is now the same company as NTL.

NTL is a very large provider of network connectivity, and apparently the only provider of network connectivity to fasthosts, a large and widely used hosting service. fasthosts was down for approximately 9 hours, despite them saying:

every server enjoys a fully redundant Tier 1 connection so our customers never experience slow-down or service interruptions.

Clearly, going both connections going though the same connectivity provider is not "fully redundant"

Even more worryingly, there doesn't seem to be any mechanism on fasthosts' website where it documents connectivity or connectivity issues, so consumers who purchase hosting services are lack the information to make informed decisions. The incident does not appear on their news feeds.

What it comes down to is that all our virtual worlds, our blogs, podcasts and news feeds, our virtual learning, course management and integrated assessment systems, are all dependent on a webs of cables, rooms of servers and power supply. Without these, our computers are expensive boat anchors.

Does your institution have redundant power and connectivity? Have you tested them recently?

E2005 Podcast: Virtual Possibilities Network

podcaster — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 17:56:06 -0500

This 52 minute recording provides coverage of the 2005 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference Session entitled Virtual Possibilities Network: A Public-Private Mixing Bowl.

EDUCAUSE | Network Management

All our virtual worlds are built on the physical

E2005 Podcast: Virtual Possibilities Network