My Etherealmind · Network Dictionary - Backhoe Attenuation

Brilliant!

A term I've used in IT for years, a "backhoe issue", refers to a real-world risk scenario for any web or Internet-based services single point of failure. You can spend kajillions on your load balanced, fail-over, clustered, RAID-based and secure network software system, and still find your business's day-to-day revenues are stalled by the simple application of a backhoe somewhere between your company and a large subset (or the whole) of your user base.

I've heard it described, probably by a colleague, or a consultant at one of my previous employers, to describe issues that need to be addressed to achieve "five nines", or 99.999% up-time guaranties. It is nice to see a more "official" definition exists out there in the real world.

My Etherealmind · Network Dictionary - Backhoe Attenuation: "Network Dictionary - Backhoe Attenuation 15 February 2008 in CCIE, Design, Network Dictionary | No comments Backhoe Attenuation - term used to describe the loss of signal (attentuation) of your copper or fibre cable by a backhoe digging your cable out of the ground. Failure is usually severe as the entire cable will need to the replaced."

Typically, you try to solve for it at your network center by either by dividing your audience among multiple network centers, so fewer people are affected by a backhoe, or by having redundant connections to the Internet. At Metron, we installed a connection to AT&T through cabling under our front wall, and a second connection to another company under our back wall. (Notice different walls. Redundancy doesn't help very much when you have both redundant connections bunched together for your backhoe to take out with one dig.)