I recently saw this on Facebook:
BREAKING: Some Xfinity/Comcast users are getting a message in the Chicago and Springfield, Illinois markets that they are shutting down Internet service until 11:15 PM this evening due to overheating equipment…
Update: some areas are doing rolling outages.
Are rolling outages due to heat something common for ISPs to do? I’ve never heard of it for any of the hundreds of ISPs I’ve talked to.
I recently saw this on Facebook:
BREAKING: Some Xfinity/Comcast users are getting a message in the Chicago and Springfield, Illinois markets that they are shutting down Internet service until 11:15 PM this evening due to overheating equipment...
Update: some areas are doing rolling outages.
Are you sure this isn't a spoof?
Are rolling outages due to heat something common for ISPs to do? I've never heard of it for any of the hundreds of ISPs I've talked to.
Not in my experience. Network gear generates heat. Datacenters are or should be designed to remove this heat, with appropriate redundancy.
In outside HFC cable plant, there are distributed cable trunk amplifiers and fiber equipment. These are designed to survive a wide range of temperatures. A failure in the outside plant distribution would also take out their cable television offerings.
This outside plant equipment is typically locally powered from the local utility, with power injected into the coaxial trunk cable. In many cases there is no battery backup or very little for these trunk amplifiers and fiber media converters.
If the local power utility is having rolling power blackouts, it's going to affect cable modem customers in the area of the rolling power blackouts, many of which won't notice because their power is also out. Direct fiber customers (GPON, etc.) shouldn't have an issue.
I know the person that posted it and they wouldn’t knowingly post something false. That’s not to say that that some trickster isn’t clever.
Mike - There are a lot of rolling power outages.
Thus the reason for the overheating most likely as gear, while on battery backup, generally lacks the cooling capacity.
Horizon, Comcast, Wow/Breezeway apparently are doing the same across the Columbus Marketing in Ohio as well.
Rolling power outages in the Chicago area are very uncommon. Usually it’s due to a failure of something and not a planned load shed, but even then, it’s uncommon any time there isn’t physical damage from a storm.