[66626] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: One-element vs two-element design
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Kuhnke)
Sat Jan 17 18:25:13 2004
X-Qmail-Scanner-Mail-From: eric@fnordsystems.com via server4.saturnbandwidth.net
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 15:23:42 -0800
From: Eric Kuhnke <eric@fnordsystems.com>
To: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0401171423170.30471@ls02.fas.harvard.edu>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
> This is why commercial airliners have multiple engines even though the
> system is less reliable overall than a well designed single engine craft
> the failure of a single component does not entail the catastrophic failure
> of the entire system. (there are exceptions to this but the overall
> concept does work).
Last year, a Boeing in flight over the middle of the pacific ocean had
its entire glass cockpit system go dark. After frantic conversation
with the air traffic controllers a decision was made to toggle the
circuit breakers for the TRIPLE-REDUNDANT computer system onboard, which
brought back the displays. Even with a 2+1 setup, things can still go
wrong...
