We are constrained by the JANET national network at risk period for centain sites connected via the CLEO network. Planned maintenance can occur between 7am and 9am on Tuesdays, unless there are special circumstances. JANET have allowed us to potentially start work at 6am if needs be.
The outages yesterday affected some of these sites, so the engineers involved set out from Lancaster between 5.30am and 6.00am with the actual work starting from 7.30am. Due to the work being routine in nature and the planning involved we could confidently say the work would be finished within 30 minutes and not much elbow room was needed.
The outage on Tuesday 10th is grander in scale. Therefore the actual outage will commence from 6am but the engineers involved we actually be starting preparation and pre-outage work from 3am.
All outages announced are worst case and therefore have breathing room built in. Actual downtime to the network is always estimated not to fill the whole period announced. We also try to give two weeks notice for any planned outage.
Though sometimes because of unforeseen circumstances and conditions there are outages on the CLEO Network, the engineers responsible for designing and maintaining the network are passionate about what they do and do everything within their power to keep the network usable 24/7 while still constantly upgrading and improving it.
