NetEqualizer News Blog

Time Warner’s Nationwide outage got my wheels turning again about how we perceive risk when it comes to network outages.

For example:

We have close to 10,000 NetEqualizer systems in the field, of which, we get about 10 failures a year. If you further break down those failures  to root cause, about 80 percent are due to some external event:

•  lightning
• flood
• heat
• blunt trauma

Given that breakdown, the chances of a NetEqualizer failure for a well-maintained system in a properly vented environment is far less than 1 percent a year. I would also assume that for a simple router or firewall the failure rate is about the same.

Now compare those odds with the chances that your Internet provider is going to crash and burn for some extended outage during the business day  over the course of a full year?

I would say the odds of this happening approach 100 percent.

And yet, the perception often is that, you need a hardware fail-over strategy, and that certainly is a good idea for those who have critical Internet needs. But if you are truly trying to mitigate risk in order of precedence, you should address the potential outages from your provider before investing in redundant hardware.

Here again, our top 5 reasons for an Internet Outage.

Below are list of recent publicly reported outages for various reasons. I am not intentionally picking on the larger service providers here , I do not believe they are any more or less vulnerable than some smaller regional providers , they just tend to make news headlines with their outages.

Comcast Outage for North Denver Fiber cut

Comcast hit with massive Internet outage

Forum discussion about wide spread Internet outage Des Moines Iowa

Spokane Washington 10,000 customers without Internet service

Wide spread Internet outage London , Virgin Media