Fiber cut due to manhole explosion in NY [May 06 2015 - 10:15AM]

[Bob Tinkelman]

This is an advisory posting for ISPnet customers.  It primarily
affects customers connected to ISPnet at our Newark or our Staten
Island POP.

Yesterday morning there was an outage on a circuit linking two
ISPnet POPs:

   165 Halsey St., Newark, NJ
   85 Tenth Ave., New York, NY

The cause was a manhole fire and explosion in midtown Manhattan:

   http://www.amny.com/news/manhole-explosion-at-west-35th-street-and-8th-avenue-1.10394812?

Due to the redundant nature of our network, customer connectivity
was maintained through automatic failover to fall-back paths.

     [There were two exceptions where, some manual
     reconfiguration was necessary due to a second,
     unrelated problem on another circuit.]

Normally carriers are able to restore service after fiber cuts
like this reasonably quickly.  Our carrier has advised us that
there are delays while the EPA assesses the situation before
giving approval for restoration work to begin.

Until the problem is repaired, ISPnet customers should continue
to receive full Internet connectivity.  However, customers
connected to ISPnet in our Newark and Staten Island POPs will
be operating with a higher level of vulnerability.  Customers
connected to other ISPnet POPs (e.g., 85 Tenth) should not be
affected.

We will post updates when additional information is available.
--
Bob Tinkelman          <bob at tink.com>
ISPnet, Inc.    http://www.ispnet.net
+1 (718) 464-4747  office
+1 (800) 806-NETS  toll free