dslreports logo
 
    All Forums Hot Topics Gallery
spc
Search similar:


uniqs
10690
Tig
join:2006-06-29
Carrying Place, ON

Tig to LiveInVan

Member

to LiveInVan

Re: [ALL] Explosion at Shaw Court knocks out most of Shaw servic

From the Calgary Herald;
Shaw president Peter Bissonnette said the outage started with a "flash incident."
A fire broke out in a transformer on the 13th floor, but as the backup system came on, the sprinklers took it down, as well.

Sprinklers took it down may be inaccurate. In a fire situation, power should be cut by design even before the sprinklers go off.
alphaz18
join:2005-02-26
CANADA

alphaz18 to kevinds

Member

to kevinds
most certainly kevinds we've suggested it. but they like to cheap out and they say oh we dont need it. blabla shaw is reliable blalba. our shaw never goes down blalba. telus sucks blabla etcetc. typical Small business attitude. believe everything should be always running for like next to 0 cost.

ShawSean
join:2010-07-16
Vernon, BC

1 edit

ShawSean to LiveInVan

Member

to LiveInVan
Thanks for everyone's patience and understanding during this outage - all I can tell you right now is that it's all hands on deck as we try and resolve this situation as soon as possible.

I'll do my best to provide DSLReports with updates when they're made available. You can also get updates via »shaw.ca »facebook.com/shaw and »twitter.com/shawhelp

Cheers,
Sean

kushblazers
@telus.net

kushblazers

Anon

Hi,

I live in Vancouver BC and I just arrived at my cabin in New Denver BC yesterday (Wed 11 2012). I have shaw as my provider obviously for my phone, internet, and satellite. My phone and internet is working fine but I can't seem to get my satellite back up for some reason. Usually when we get to our cabin we have to call shaw to reactivate the satellite apparently. Any ways around this because SHAW is completely down still obviously. The website is also still down. Any help would be great!! Glad nobody got hurt in the explosion!!

rustydusty
join:2009-09-29
Red Deer County, AB

rustydusty to LiveInVan

Member

to LiveInVan
Shaw Satelite should not be affected, nor should internet or cable. Especially if you are not in the Calgary downtown core. Any issues outside of the downtown core are not related, however with support being down those issues won't be able to be resolved until possibly later on today.

kevinds
Premium Member
join:2003-05-01
Calgary, AB

kevinds to kushblazers

Premium Member

to kushblazers
If when you get back to your cabin normally, and you have to call to have your terminal reactivated, you likely will again.

The DACs are/were all in Calgary, so until they get the backups in place, or the office fixed, not likely.

hdpoint
Lethbridge, Alberta
join:2009-03-02
Lethbridge, AB

hdpoint to LiveInVan

Member

to LiveInVan
Corus is a separate entity from Shaw. My point in my original post was to say that there are other business in Shaw Court that got hit with this fire.

Isn't it eerie that it happened on the 13th floor?

I'm happy everyone is OK.

kushblazers
@telus.net

kushblazers to kevinds

Anon

to kevinds
Ya I figured I would have to wait til the call centers are back up. Any idea on when that might be? I am not familiar with Shaw and its business nor that industry so I am just curious but how come Shaw relies on Calgary so heavily? What I mean is how come a fire in Calgary affects all of shaws website capabilities and call centers? Wouldn't it be smarter to have call centers based regionally??
Cornat
join:2011-10-17
Kelowna, BC

1 recommendation

Cornat to LiveInVan

Member

to LiveInVan
Following what's been posted on the Shaw Facebook page and Shaw.ca, we know that the only actual service outage that was caused by the fire was about 30,000 in downtown Calgary, most of which (if not all) has been restored. The only thing directly Shaw related that is affected now is the call centers, and internal tools. All services should be fine. If they're not, it's due to something else, but unfortunately you can't call in to get it fixed.

Sounds like the government systems are still affected as well.
»metronews.ca/news/edmont ··· plosion/

Comments on the Shaw Facebook page are saying AHS is still down as well.

Anonytech
@shawcable.net

Anonytech to kevinds

Anon

to kevinds
The dac's are located in a different office and are not affected by this outage. If the dacs went, all stb's in southern alberta would go dark. All services phone, internet, tv, vod are all working as those run on seperate networks, however the downtown core services are affected. The hubsite had no power and therefore would have stopped working.

Satellite for your information uses a sac, not a dac. The sac isn't located in canada at all. The issue however is since the internal IT network was affected by this, provisioning systems are down. That is what is being sorted out today and other services that where affected - radio, calgary services and so forth.

Also, the fire happened on the 13 floor in the power utility room. The hub and server equipment are located on the main floor and other floors. The issue was at peter mentioned in the press conference was that the trasformer blew up, caught on fire and as the backup generator started to turn on to feed the ups, the sprinklers went off and took out that equipment as well. In any event, if the transformer did not catch on fire, the Backup/DR would have kicked in. I can gurantee that shaw tests generators out, switching to backup power often, but obviously they can't test with water being in the mix and unforeseeable events. What this will most likely result in is looking at additional power backups in case your primary and backup go.

Fibers and equipement should be ok as long as no surges took out servers, and no water damage, but again they are on different floors so who knows. The fire wouldn't have affected fiber as the utility room is just hvac and power.

kevinds
Premium Member
join:2003-05-01
Calgary, AB

kevinds to shaw user

Premium Member

to shaw user
Yes, it is common place for ISPs, and everyone to do this. No better place then your own building for your equipment. Especially a headquarters building.

zed173
join:2010-07-17
Mississauga, ON

zed173 to Anonytech

Member

to Anonytech
Any particular reason why there was sprinklers around electrical equipment and not FM200 or another dry agent instead? Seems it was a problem waiting to happen all along.

kushblazers
@telus.net

kushblazers to rustydusty

Anon

to rustydusty
Ya that is what I figured I would have to do. So you guys anticipate the Shaw call center to be back up by later tonight? For such a huge company how could a fire in Calgary effect so much of the companies online capabilities and call centers. Wouldn't call centers be more regional based rather than depending on Calgary for all of Canada. I am not an IT guy or computer guy so forgive me if I don't know the basic aspects just curious. Thanks again!!

kevinds
Premium Member
join:2003-05-01
Calgary, AB

kevinds to zed173

Premium Member

to zed173
That was my first thought too... why water, other than cost, overall cost after the sprinklers go off however though, makes it long-term more cost effective.

I'm not sure all the rules, but FM200 is not to be used where people 'normally' work?

sdha
@telus.net

sdha to Anonytech

Anon

to Anonytech
said by Anonytech :

The dac's are located in a different office and are not affected by this outage. If the dacs went, all stb's in southern alberta would go dark. All services phone, internet, tv, vod are all working as those run on seperate networks, however the downtown core services are affected. The hubsite had no power and therefore would have stopped working.

Satellite for your information uses a sac, not a dac. The sac isn't located in canada at all. The issue however is since the internal IT network was affected by this, provisioning systems are down. That is what is being sorted out today and other services that where affected - radio, calgary services and so forth.

Also, the fire happened on the 13 floor in the power utility room. The hub and server equipment are located on the main floor and other floors. The issue was at peter mentioned in the press conference was that the trasformer blew up, caught on fire and as the backup generator started to turn on to feed the ups, the sprinklers went off and took out that equipment as well. In any event, if the transformer did not catch on fire, the Backup/DR would have kicked in. I can gurantee that shaw tests generators out, switching to backup power often, but obviously they can't test with water being in the mix and unforeseeable events. What this will most likely result in is looking at additional power backups in case your primary and backup go.

Fibers and equipement should be ok as long as no surges took out servers, and no water damage, but again they are on different floors so who knows. The fire wouldn't have affected fiber as the utility room is just hvac and power.

Glad no one was hurt. But I guess its a lesson learnt, and not just for shaw but all data "communication" service providers. The City when into distress over one indecent. Could you image if the incident was not isolated?

They talk about are power grid being suitable, but is are "communication" grid suitable? Then again they are partly the same.

Glad the situation at Shaw is under control. =->

zed173
join:2010-07-17
Mississauga, ON

zed173 to kevinds

Member

to kevinds
Yeah you can have it in buildings where people work (I work in one now). Only requirements are signage, warning lights (first stage) and alarms (second stage). And it can only be in equipment rooms, not office area, stuff like that.
Glen T
join:2003-11-03
BC

Glen T

Member

Ironically, we had Shaw installers on site in our office this afternoon, as we were in the process of switching all of our ISP services and phone from Telus to Shaw.

They completed the installation of hardware, but we remain on Telus. No activation and no on-line lights on our new Shaw modem. We are located in Burnaby BC.

kevinds
Premium Member
join:2003-05-01
Calgary, AB

kevinds to zed173

Premium Member

to zed173
said by zed173:

Yeah you can have it in buildings where people work (I work in one now). Only requirements are signage, warning lights (first stage) and alarms (second stage). And it can only be in equipment rooms, not office area, stuff like that.

That is what was meaning by where people normally are, people are not normally in equipment rooms.

The DAC is only needed to change things, add/remove channels, PPV, shutting down a DAC will not 'disable' all STBs.
I have read the DAC manual - boring but neat. My terminal did not get communication from the DAC at 2:30 as it normally does, 11th at 0230 was the last time.

Which country is Shaw Direct's in? Are you sure SAC is correct? I can find no references to it.
Glen T
join:2003-11-03
BC

Glen T

Member

Additional info:

Fire Chief Bruce Burrell, who heads the Calgary Emergency Management Agency, said the Shaw building is a "key hub" for national, provincial and municipal networking infrastructure.

“Certainly it's a relatively new building. It was specially designed special purpose built for this, engineered specifically to have double redundancies in it. So whatever has failed I'm sure will be quite a topic for discussion,” he said.

Peter Bissonnette, president of Shaw Communications, apologized for the breakdown.

It’s not yet clear why the backup system failed to take over, but he said the activation of the sprinkler system might have played a role. He said they have to be careful about bringing services back.

“We absolutely apologize for what has happened, and we're doing our best to restore services and we are in an emergency restoration process. So it may seem it's taking a little bit longer, but that length is actually necessary to ensure that things are done safely.”

Bissonnette said it's still unclear what caused the initial fire.
Expand your moderator at work

AnonyTech
@shawcable.net

AnonyTech to kevinds

Anon

to kevinds

Re: [ALL] Explosion at Shaw Court knocks out most of Shaw servic

Search up NAS-RAC Access Control. Its in the first line of the document

(SAC) - satellite access control

Its a facility for all satellite related authorizations.

You won't find specs or any other info on the sac as it is not a productized item that is sold to companys. The dac however is.

You are right that if an stb lost communication to the dac,as long as the keys do not roll you would still receive channels and be authorized. That scenario is either a poor signal or bad splitters that break the link back to shaw, but the dacs are still up. You also didn't mention that the dacs control linear edge device that encrypts the signal, provision channel maps, create channels and so forth. You have talked about the customer aspect of the dac, authorizing channels, adding / removing stbs, but there also is a cable operator aspect too.

Hopefully this sheds some light.
mr nobody
join:2004-12-02

mr nobody to LiveInVan

Member

to LiveInVan
I wish Shaw would add a RSS feed to it's twitter page. so we can subscribe to to with out the need of a twitter account.

ShawSean
join:2010-07-16
Vernon, BC

ShawSean

Member

@jerrycanada - some good feedback jerry, I'll pass that along.

Cheers.

battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

battleop to alphaz18

Member

to alphaz18
I love it when something like that happens and they call to tell you how many tens of thousands of dollars they are losing every minute they are down.
Mango
Use DMZ and you get a kick in the dick.
Premium Member
join:2008-12-25
www.toao.net

Mango to mr nobody

Premium Member

to mr nobody
said by mr nobody:

I wish Shaw would add a RSS feed to it's twitter page.

»twitter.com/statuses/use ··· help.rss

Pauly
join:2004-05-29
canada

Pauly to MaynardKrebs

Member

to MaynardKrebs
said by MaynardKrebs:

Watch for Vic Toews to blame it on pedophile terrorists, and reiterate the need to read all your e-mail via warrantless wiretaps.

umm who is vick tows?
scouzer
join:2007-10-15
Schenectady, NY

scouzer

Member

Really? Not only do you spell it wrong, you'd rather type out a reply than just look it up yourself?

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Toews
HeadSpinning
MNSi Internet
join:2005-05-29
Windsor, ON

HeadSpinning to zed173

Member

to zed173
said by zed173:

Yeah you can have it in buildings where people work (I work in one now). Only requirements are signage, warning lights (first stage) and alarms (second stage). And it can only be in equipment rooms, not office area, stuff like that.

When talking with the risk management consultant from our insurance carrier, they said that they don't recommend FM-200 for electrical rooms - rather they'd prefer to see water.

We were pretty surprised. His explanation was that most electrical switchgear isn't really harmed by water. Typically, the panels are designed to shed water unless it is spraying directly on them.

If there IS a fire, water will put it out, and cool things down. From a recovery point of view, you then have to replace the failed equipment, and in theory dry off any switchgear that got wet, but then for the most part, you're back in business.

Your UPS and other electronic (not electric) equipment will likely of course be damaged by the water.

I was surprised.
MaynardKrebs
We did it. We heaved Steve. Yipee.
Premium Member
join:2009-06-17

MaynardKrebs

Premium Member

said by HeadSpinning:

When talking with the risk management consultant from our insurance carrier, they said that they don't recommend FM-200 for electrical rooms - rather they'd prefer to see water.

Hope you got that in writing from him & the insurance company.