November 2004


Optical fibre vs. truck... When a "MACK" takes down your network

It was the kind of disaster that every network operator fears the most … that something, somewhere, will take down the network. It can be anything … equipment failure, a flood or fire.

For ORION, that disaster took the shape of a massive construction truck when it backed into a hydro pole near Barrie and cut off power and ORION’s fibre, killing ORION’s connection north of Barrie for 12 hours.

Last December’s accident drove home the urgency of having a fail-proof backup system in place, to ensure that the connection, if broken, can be automatically routed through another path or network, with little or no impact on the speed or quality of the connection.

The infamous Barrie accident was very much on ORION network engineers’ minds last week, when Hydro One Telecom - one of ORION's strategic partners, provisioned a 760-kilometre critical GigE backup circuit between Windsor and Ottawa.

“ORION’s users expect a reliable and robust network. The only way to meet those expectations is to provide full network component redundancy that translates into carrier-class availability to the end user,” says ORION Senior Director of Engineering and Operations, Sam Mokbel, who emphasizes that the network was clearly designed and resourced to ensure the highest rate of reliability possible.

ORION features advanced redundant power plants at each of its 22 PoP locations, with a minimum of 10 hours emergency power backup in case of outages or blackouts. Mokbel and his team are always quick to point out that the ORION PoPs remained fully operational in August 2003, during the massive Ontario blackout.

ORION’s Network Operations Centre, operated by UNIS LUMIN, also plays a critical role in monitoring the state of the network, available 24-7 should any issue arise out of any of ORION’s 22 Points of Presence, or at any of the additional 25 locations along the 4,200 kilometre network route where ORION has equipment.

In those cases, ORION relies on service arrangements with its partners, including Bell and Hydro One Telecom and others.

ORION’s own engineering team - Senior IP Engineer Shahid Ajaz, Senior Network Analyst Nadeem Junejo, Project Manager Ron Neil, and Technical Support Specialist Tyson Vickers - has some of the most recognized faces in all of Ontario’s advanced networking community.

They have crossed the province multiple times since the start of the network build almost two years ago. The team continues to travel, sometimes at a moment’s notice, to deal with occasional equipment failures or other critical service issues.

ORION also provides a popular Technical Support portal for ORION users, which provides live data traffic maps, network diagnostic tools, and just recently, a Looking Glass service for network engineers. It helps them troubleshoot network problems and gives them an authoritative snapshot of the state of their connectivity to the Internet and to the global R&E community.

Network security is another priority for ORION. The network’s equipment is situated in a secured computer room environment at each of ORION’s 22 PoP locations, accessible by authorized personnel only.

Special configuration guidelines are followed on all switches routers and servers to prevent unauthorized remote access for read, write or relay operations.

ORION does not use dedicated firewalls to limit access to the network but upon requests from users will configure the on-site equipment with special packet filtering access lists.

ORION engineers can also install blocking filters on backbone routers to minimize the impact of denial of service attacks and they work with the network users and service providers to track down and disable the source of the attack.

“While we can’t eliminate the possibility of a truck, or another disaster from affecting the network, we are taking the necessary steps to make sure that our network infrastructure is as robust and reliable as possible,“ says Mokbel.


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