Friday, March 11, 2011

WELCOME

Welcome to the North Branch Networks Status Log. We will post news of significant network events here. This is the place to check for any network issues if you have Internet access. If not, call (802) 382-8700 for current status, particularly for any outage information. Any news is posted there first, and events are generally documented here more fully somewhat later.

PERFECT STORM

From Monday morning through 6:45pm Tuesday evening we experienced the longest, most widespread outage in our five-year history. A mega-snowstorm, which prevented vehicle access to our W. Cornwall tower location until it was cleared with a front end loader early Tuesday morning, a concealed equipment problem on the Battell roof pushed over the edge by the drifted snow there, and finally, a defect in a brand new unused spare backhaul radio we attempted to deploy to replace the unit at Battell conspired to lengthen our concerted efforts at restoration.

The only good news is that the discovery of the problem on the Battell roof has already solved a couple of nagging minor network issues, including the past month's problem with the W. Cornwall link, and has improved network performance perceptibly.

We are aware aware that constant broadband connectivity is a necessity, and that this kind of event is absolutely unacceptable. We are evaluating the lessons learned and implementing policy changes, which, in combination with this year's backhaul redundancy plan, will make a recurrence of this disaster impossible. Thank you for your continued patronage and support as we move forward.