Whew! What a day. Just after 10AM the power in our office went out, and we all ran downstairs because of heavy smoke on our floor in the Keith Building. Turns out the transformer blew. Not knowing how long it would take to have it replaced, a nimble squad of OhioOnline network engineers rushed our SGI Web servers down the block and across the street to our nearest alternative POP (point of presence), the Renaissance Hotel. We had primary DNS and most of our clients' Web sites up within the hour. We brought up strategic servers in our office as emergency power became available, and brought all servers back up when full power was restored to the building. What can I say? OhioOnline is all about customer service.

Between periods of stress and excitement, we thought about the design of our network in light of the Gauntlet firewall we will soon be adding. Which machines and services need to be protected by the firewall? Which machines and services need to be outside it? Interesting stuff that afforded me a deeper glimpse into our network infrastructure — things like routers and terminal servers, about which I have yet no clue.