A single network Card failure causes major delays at LAX

It just goes to show you that they need some type of failover.



According to reports, a single computer crash on Saturday in the Customs office of LAX caused hours of delays for more than 17,000 airline passengers. US Customs officials say that a malfunctioning network card on a single desktop created a "domino" effect with its other computers, leading to a total system failure that caused massive wait times. According to a Customs spokesman, "We lost access to our national systems, as well as our local area network." He went on the claim that it took over ten hours to diagnose the problem, halting screening operations and leaving passengers stranded on planes or in the airport -- unable to enter or leave the US. From the sounds of it, Customs need to hire a handful of Engadget readers, who we're pretty sure could have located the source of the problem in considerably less time.

Message edited 8/16/2007 2:56:39 PM.

Re: A single network Card failure causes major delays at LAX

Seriously, if it took them that long to track the failure, they need a new job. Good grief.

Re: A single network Card failure causes major delays at LAX

I couldn't believe it when it was happening over the weekend! I'm so glad I live close to
OC Airport...unbelievable!

Re: A single network Card failure causes major delays at LAX

Are you kidding me - those are b!tch to track down! We had it happen here once... took almost the same amount of time to track it down. But we don't even have sniffers and this was years ago...you would think LAX could handle it better...although, I have no idea how many nodes they have...

Re: A single network Card failure causes major delays at LAX

If they just set up some Virtual Networks, this wouldn't happen. We have some labs here where engineers do some weird things sometimes, and once in a while they would bring the entire network down, similar to this story. By setting up virtual networks, you can only take out a limited area.

Someplace the size of LAX should definitely have done that years ago....

Re: A single network Card failure causes major delays at LAX

Posted by GoldenRod

If they just set up some Virtual Networks, this wouldn't happen. We have some labs here where engineers do some weird things sometimes, and once in a while they would bring the entire network down, similar to this story. By setting up virtual networks, you can only take out a limited area.

Someplace the size of LAX should definitely have done that years ago....

Re: A single network Card failure causes major delays at LAX

Sniffers, tracing MAC addresses, virtual networks, core layer vs. distributed layer. There are SO many things they could have done different. But I guess airline travel isn't important.