December 4, 2006
The internet connection at work went down Friday afternoon just before 4:00. It wasn't our fault; power-cycling the router showed the same thing: 2 T1 lines, both red.
After becoming increadingly annoyed at Verizon for not following up like they're supposed to during a reported outage, we finally got a promise to call the local Verizon center, find out what the hell was going on, and call us back. (Apparently the world will end if us plebes, or even the level-one call center techs, dare speak to the local office. After all, they're the ones who know what the hell's going on.)
When the call came about 45 minutes later, we had our answer: The worst case of backhoe fade I've ever heard of. Somewhere between Reston and Manassas, someone managed to damage the fiberoptic backbone of a large portion of the east coast's internet. At least an OC12, probably, maybe an OC48. But lots of people's connections went dark that afternoon.
Some construction guy definitely had himself a bad day.
