Ike Preparations at Architel
Alexander Muse , September 13, 2008
Just a quick programming note, we have staff on-site at our INFOMART data center in the unlikely event of a power disruption. If you experience an outage please call the help desk number 214.550.2002 and our on call tech will dispatch someone.
Skeleton Staff at Architel Today in honor of Freedom Day!
Alexander Muse , September 11, 2008
Architel has been a member of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of North Texas for several years. Since the events of 9/11, each year the organization has remembered those who died and honored those who either gave or risked their lives to save others - now called Freedom Day. This year Pam Gerber, the executive director of EFNT, thought we could celebrate Freedom Day by serving those who serve us - firemen. Startups from around North Texas donned their red t-shirts and headed to various firehouses around the city. Architel was assigned Firehouse 46 and our team is in the process of cleaning, painting, landscaping, replacing carpet, replacing countertops, refinishing wood lockers, tinting windows and whatever else our 50 person team can accomplish in a single day. Here are some pictures from the event.
Google Chrome Not Ready for Business
Alexander Muse , September 9, 2008
Unless you are a software developer, please don’t start using Google’s new browser (aka Chrome). Why? Well it isn’t ready for business. Here at Architel our engineers who tried using Chrome lost an hour a day in productive time. Specifically, every third ticket update would result in a five minute ‘bouncing ball’. We estimated that a single day of our engineers using Chrome cost us 30 man hours - almost a full week of productivity. If we tried Chrome for an entire week we would lose five weeks of productivty and so on. My advice? Wait until version 1.0 of Chrome is released.
Connectivity Risks in Dallas
Alexander Muse , September 5, 2008
This morning I had the chance to talk to a potential data center client who was concerned that most ISPs that service Dallas seem to be located in the INFOMART. He felt that locating his equipment outside of the INFOMART would help lower this risk of downtime. Of course I tried to explain that the opposite might be true.
I began by explaining that most of the long haul fiber entering Dallas hits the Electra POP near the AA center. Originally leased (99 year lease) by Western Wireless, then IXC, who became Broadwing and ultimately purchased by Level (3), the small facility is home to most of the long haul fiber in Dallas. There isn’t enough room in the POP for much besides basic optronics and simply muxing gear, so many carriers have connected their fiber to POPs built in 2323 Bryan St. The building is full of carriers who use the building to light their fiber and sell capacity. There are few colocation facilities in the building, but most of them are very full or very expensive. As a result many of the ISPs connected their networks from 2323 Bryan St. to 1950 Stemmons (more commonly known as the INFOMART) a 1.4 million square foot building with huge floor plates. Most of the internet routers in Dallas are in one or more facilities located in the INFOMART.
The net-net is that these three locations form a triangle of connectivity. If any one of them is distrupted Dallas’ various connections to the internet would likely go down. Staying away from anyone of these locations may seem like a good idea, since in many ways they are great ‘targets’. Ironically, the most likely scenario is that with all of the construction going on in Dallas (notice all of the cranes?) it is more likely that the local loops (the connections that run between buildings in our streets) will be cut accidently. If the INFOMART is destroyed I imagine almost every internet connection in Dallas would be distrupted. If the local loop between the INFOMART and your building is cut you are the only one who will be down. I suspect you are 99% more likely of the later than the former and of course the former means you are down anyway…
My advice? For colocation pick one of the main buildings: 2323 Bryan or INFOMART.
iPhone not working this morning? Join the club
Alexander Muse , September 3, 2008
Last week an AT&T insider suggested that the sooner that all iPhone users upgraded to the new 2.0.2 update, the sooner iPhone users would be in connectivity nirvana. So far that doesn’t appear to be the case, with users in our all things Macintosh forum reporting that they’ve lost EDGE and/or HSDPA data service connectivity completely this morning. “Email, Safari, everything is toast,” complains one user. “No Edge connectivity at all,” complains another. It looks like this may not be specific to the iPhone, as other AT&T customers say they’re also having connectivity issues. “We are aware of the reports, and we are looking into it,” AT&T spokesman Brad Mays tells me.
Update: AT&T has this to say about this morning’s problems: “There was a routing issue affecting some wireless data use in the Northeast region. AT&T technicians determined the cause and restored service at 11:56 a.m. EDT. Voice calling, text messaging and BlackBerry email were unaffected.”
