Gatwick IT or Vodafone?

[pgn]

So Gatwick OPs handed out whiteboards and dry-wipe markers when the display screens all went on the fritz...

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/whiteboards-used-as-gatwick-flight-info-screens-fail-11477470

Who said mobile data networks were the future? Oops.

[Anonymous]

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@pgn wrote:

After the fact, of course...

The diversity put into the fibre incoming to my workplace over a decade ago has stood us in good stead, so far... Different vendors, different paths, although, alas limited for several years to BT for the last few miles, even if they do come into the building from opposite ends and in diverse ducts...

"Backhoe" incidents are all too frequent, and when there were 2 sites about 20miles apart where I work, one was taken out for about 36hours when a digger went through the ducts late one summer evening... Never seen so many floodlights shining down a hole as on that evening...

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@pgn

A few months back one of the remote offices at work was taken out by what turned out to be a Rat chewing through the fibre.

[pgn]

Yeah, @Anonymous, @some armoured fibre is coated with chemicals abhorrent to rodents... but tastes change

[Anonymous]

@pgn

I've no involvement with the physical networking side of things at work so don't know if this fibre was armoured or not.

I think this particular one was maintained through BT.

[gmarkj]

I have two stories to share, both amusing for different reasons.
1: An auditor used to come on site once a month to check paperwork for vehicles was in order. As he was a mobile worker he had a company laptop. To connect to the network he would unplug the cable from the back of the PC on the desk he was using, do his work, and then plug it back into the PC.
On this occasion instead of plugging it into the PC he instead plugged it into an unused network port on the wall. Cue network meltdown. This was a Friday afternoon. We had no on-site IT so had to get a contractor in (from central IT) Friday, Saturday and Monday before the issue was resolved.
2: There was a new roundabout and overpass being built just down the road from my workplace (it was one of 3 warehouses on the site). JCB went straight through the telecoms cables. No connection to outside for 24 hours while they patched it up.
According to the info we got passed, the cables should have been 2 metres to one side of where they were but had been moved because they couldn't dig the trench where they were supposed to have.