Network managers rely on pagers to let them know when their networks are in trouble. But what happens when the pagers go down?
It's a question network managers are asking themselves today, following yesterday's failure of a satellite that services more than 80% of the pagers in the U.S.
Just ask David Brandon, director of new product services at SBC Communications, Inc. in Dallas.
Last night, one of SBC's California sites began reporting problems with its authentication routine - users couldn't log in. But Brandon didn't learn until about it until this morning, because the site reported the trouble via the company's paging service.
"We didn't even know that the pagers were down so we couldn't go into emergency response mode," Brandon said.
According to PanAmSat, Inc., owner of the troubled satellite that services more than 30 million pagers in the U.S., the problem was a failure in the onboard processor that keeps the satellite pointed toward the earth. "As a result of the [control processor problems], the satellite began to rotate, thereby losing its fixed orientation," the statement said.
For Brandon, the pager outage points out problems in relying on the service for mission-critical information. SBC operates remote sites around the country and Brandon relies on the pager system to let him know of problems at those sites.
"I have the monitoring systems configured to page me if a [network equipment room] starts to overheat. If the temperature in a room climbs to 90 degrees, I'll get paged."
And when that happens, timing is critical - somebody has to get to the site quickly, because extreme heat shuts down the routers, causing severe traffic problems on the network.
From now on, Brandon said team members will probably have to keep their cell phones on at all times.
"I have in place several monitoring systems that page me and they won't be able to," said Brad Williams, senior telecommunications analyst at Pier 1 Imports, Inc. in Ft. Worth, Texas. Pier 1's paging system was still not back online this morning.
Williams said he will have to be in front of the network monitoring systems all day because most of his network alerts come through his pager. "I have automated systems that let me know when certain conditions occur," he said. Those systems also send Williams an e-mail, an alert method he will rely heavily upon today.
PanAmSat said it also is examining backup plans. "Given the size and flexibility of PanAmSat's global satellite network, we are examining long-term options in the event that we cannot reactivate the satellite, including the use of available capacity on other PanAmSat spacecraft with domestic U.S. coverage," the statement said.
