More Reliance on Cloud Raising Vulnerability to Fiber Cut Woes, CCG Says

Comcast's major broadband outage earlier this month from a pair of fiber cuts on its backbone (see 1806290038) typifies "a network planner's worst nightmare" and points to the trouble many ISPs have in building in redundancy, CCG Consulting President Doug Dawson blogged Saturday. In remote areas, finding a second secure route can be impossible, leaving a network or communities vulnerable to a fiber cut somewhere outside the area, CCG said. That potential problem is growing as functions move to the cloud, meaning even redundant fiber routing isn't always the same as a redundant connection to a key cloud server, he said. Companies shouldn't assume every function in the cloud is redundant even if they have redundant internet access, it said. Comcast didn't comment Monday.