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Nuclear gigabit network
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Zeroing in on the problem
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Brief: LapLink, the next generation
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Review: Internet Mute interMute 1.2.7
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From the Editor: Power to the people with LANs
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Perfectly acceptable
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Brief: Feed your need for network speed
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Review: BorderManager Authentication Service
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NATURAL-BORN HACKERS
It was a dark and stormy night
By Martin E. Maxwell
Last year, I was systems administrator for a field
division of a state Fish and Game department. We'd been
working on a big interagency ecological research program,
and on this day all the fish data from several locations was
going to be posted on our World Wide Web server as it came
in from the labs.
At 3:30 p.m. a major storm moved through the area,
downing several power poles. Our metal office building was
battered by wind and rain, and with a loud bang we
experienced a spectacular power failure. The computer room
went pitch black and five UPS (uninterruptible power supply)
boxes shrieked loudly.
We shut down the LAN server and closed down the various
root shells we were working from on the two Internet
servers. After 20 minutes we finally powered down the
Internet server and router and went home.
At 8 p.m., I returned and found a very broken router fan
bearing. I heard horrible changes in pitch cycle up and down
in frequency as well as random noisy oscillations. I called
the state's data center help desk, explained the situation,
and waited for a call back. Since it was the first day of
our Web project, we needed to get back online as quickly as
possible.
At 10:45 p.m. a contract service tech called me, saying
he could come that night, but he had no spare routers. As we
were talking, the router fan gave a last grinding rattle and
died. I sighed and reached for the UPS switch, taking us
offline.
The tech admitted he had never seen our model of router
and didn't have a fan in stock. He agreed that disassembly
might be a prudent move, but we were not supposed to perform
such a task. But heck, a router is just hardware, so I
grabbed a screwdriver, took the case off, blew a huge dust
storm down the hallway, pried off a scorched matting of
compressed dust bunnies, and removed a dead, squished fan.
Ten minutes later we were back up on the Internet. The
router was now under a big 15-inch diameter fan running at
full bore, blowing a small gale toward the exposed power
supply and motherboard.
I returned the next morning with a three-fan unit
salvaged from an old minicomputer. Using sheet-metal screws,
I attached it to legs fashioned from drive trays and placed
it over the router. The breeze from the fans was almost
enough to make the thing hover, so I quit worrying that the
unit might overheat. The following afternoon a replacement
router showed up, and the tech was greatly amused at the
workaround. The fan assembly that I hacked together is still
on my spare-parts shelf, just in case.
Martin Maxwell is the director of Looking Glass
Research, an IT consultancy in Lodi, Calif.
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