Two circuits. One staircase. One very important Matt.
There was a time when having two T3 connections was a pretty big deal.
We had two of them.
Two beautiful connections. Two separate paths to the outside world. Enough telecommunications equipment to make a small internet service provider feel like it had finally arrived.
There was just one minor problem.
Automatic failover.
Specifically, the automatic part.
In theory, when one connection failed, the other would take over seamlessly. Customers would continue browsing, nobody would notice, and the engineers could congratulate themselves on another triumph of modern technology.
In practice, we had Matt.
Matt worked downstairs in the printing plant and upstairs with the internet equipment. When something went wrong, somebody would find him, explain which connection had fallen over, and send him running.
There was no fancy orchestration system.
There was no magical self-healing network.
There was a staircase.
And Matt.
To be fair, Matt was considerably more reliable than some of the expensive equipment we'd purchased.
He also had the advantage of being able to swear at it.
Our network was fully redundant. Provided Mattman was on the right floor.