Hardware Failure: a Network Admin’s Nightmare
Yes. It’s that thing that is most likely to keep a network admin up at night or give him the horrors. Complaints from customer service, or clients themselves (who by some stroke of luck happen to have your mobile number) calling you at 11pm to say “Hey, I can’t connect to the net! what kind of internet service is this?” And you know straight away that either:
1. Power has failed and the man in charge of changing over to the Generating set has slept off
2. There is no more fuel in the Generator (oops! somebody’s going to get a query tomorrow)
3. A cable has slipped from its socket (almost improbable but possible. no problem)
4. Worst of all: your network hardware has failed!
If it’s number 4, you have to spring out of bed and get to the server room. Start tracing: is it the access point? is it the ethernet cable? is it the router? did a power adapter blow up?