We've all seen beautifully loomed and cabled installations in people's brochures and websites, but when it comes to one's own installations somehow it never seems to work out like that - there's always a number of 'washing-lines' that appear to end up being strung across between racks or across the front of switches.
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so - Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy
It is a well established fact that time is nature's way of stopping everything happening at once.
In a network of systems it is crucial that time is consistent across the network.
Fortunately disasters rarely happen. This makes them expensive and difficult to plan for and ultimately manage. All businesses need to ensure that they are well prepared for a wide range of problems.
The answer is to plan ahead and to start thinking about how you can deal with the unthinkable.
If you are similar to many of the customers that Layer3 has worked with over the last 25 years, you will be busy developing new ways to make technical advances, getting the most out of your systems and networks. You will sometimes find that some of these advances can lead to unexpected operation, underperformance or even failures in the network.