SatSig topic:

Wildblue Server Maintenance

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Jan 30^th, 2007 at 9:06pm

I just started using WB and discovered "server maintenance" is performed Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 12:01 to 5:00 am. 10 hours of down time a week.

A long time ago I was involved with IT and we prided ourselves on a 99.97% uptime. Never crossed my mind to question service downtime.

Is this typical of other satellite ISPs or any other ISPs?

Frank

Jan 30^th, 2007 at 11:41pm

Server maintenance does not typically represent downtime for the customer base. Their network (five gateways and a NOC) is run with dozens if not hundreds of servers, but only a few are ever taken down simultaneously. Taking individual servers offline just means that the other servers have to take up the slack for the ones being worked on. If maintenance was performed during primetime, you could expect slower response times, but not necessarily any actual outage to your connection. That's why they take advantage of the Midnight to 0500 is the time slot. Wildblue service only covers four time zones, so most customers are asleep then anyway.

This is typical of all ISPs

//greg//

Jan 31^st, 2007 at 9:36pm

"Server maintenance does not typically represent downtime for the customer base. "

Greg,

In this case it does. NO service during those times.

I called at 12:30 am asking about loss of service and was told that there is no service during "server maintenace". No alternates, no options, no service. Period.

Thus my surprise, consternation, and frustration.

Frank

Feb 1^st, 2007 at 1:30am

I'm not a Wildblue customer, but I participate in two other WB-related forums - dating back to before Anik-F2 even went up. In all that time, not one other individual has ever complained about that particular issue - and believe me there are some pretty petty whiners out there. I have difficulty in accepting what you were told at face value, perhaps you were misinformed.

Was the statement made to you by NRTC support by any chance?

//greg//

Feb 2^nd, 2007 at 12:49pm

While awaiting your response, I threw jotted down some relevent information. First, it's important to distinguish between a user outage and a network outage. Your initial post seemed to suggest that - just because you may have been experiencing maintenance related issues on your connection - that the whole network was having the same problem as you. What you describe should be the (rare) exception, not the rule.

Wildblue - and almost certainly their Canadian counterparts - performs maintenance like any other provider. It's categorized into demand maintenance (when something breaks) and scheduled maintenance (to try and prevent things from breaking in the first place).

Demand maintenance: they have five gateways feeding a central NOC. Even if one gateway goes down unexpectedly, the network itself remains approximately 80% intact. There is a chance that the NOC itself could go down, but there are built-in redundancies and backup measures that are supposed to prevent complete network failures.

Scheduled maintenance; an entire network does not come down for scheduled maintenance. Segments maybe - but never the whole network. And on those segments, the work performed typically only results in reduced capability - seldom if ever is a complete interruption of serviced intended.

In both cases, just because you may be having issues with your connection, it doesn't necessarily mean the whole network is down.

It may help you become better informed about what should work and what may not during SCHEDULED outages.

//greg//