Fergie's Tech Blog

Brief L.A. Blackout Fells More Nets Than Hurricane Katrina

Gregg Keizer writes in TechWeb News:

While the brief blackout in Los Angeles Monday was caused by an errant worker snipping wires, not Mother Nature and a wall of water, the incident actually brought down more Internet networks than failed during Hurricane Katrina, a Web monitoring firm said Tuesday.

"Los Angeles is a much more network-dense place than the Gulf Coast," said Todd Underwood, the director of operations for Renesys, a Manchester, New Hampshire-based firm that monitors Internet routing traffic. "Up to 301 networks were outaged during the [power blackout] event." That was substantially more than went down during the Hurricane Katrina storm that hit Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama on August 29.

"The outages were contained locally," said Underwood, "and for the most part, redundant power structures worked. There were a couple facilities where significant networks failed, however. Backup power infrastructure seldom gets a full workup, so there are always some that fail [to kick in]."

None of the long-haul lines that connect Los Angeles to the rest of the Internet, and direct traffic through the city from other parts of the western U.S. or the Pacific Rim, were affected by the power blackout.

posted by Fergie @ 9/13/2005 05:39:00 PM