Story 1 in the "Funny ISP Story" series.
(From circa 1996, Avi Freedman, netaxs)


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So I get a call from Mark, whose basement contains essentially the
entire netaxs data center at the time.  Take a look at 
http://avi.freedman.net/wyndmoor.bmp for what we're talking about.
Hidden in there is a rack of GDC T1 CSU/DSUs, a Bell demarc with 
T1 cards in a sawed-off telco rack, etc.  Please, no comment about
the water heater sitting next to the racks.

But you will notice that the racks are wooden Ikea specials.

So I get a call from Mark on my cell, who says "I came home and smelled
smoke.  One of the CSUs is on fire!"  So of course, I ask if it's on,
since monitoring didn't page me with any down circuits.  Turns out that
the CSU is still on and passing frames, though actively smoking.  Since
most of our circuits were B8ZS, I figure maybe the AMI circuitry is
smoking for some reason.

Despite my please to let whatever chip it is finish going up in smoke 
rather than take the circuit down, Mark for some reason wants to turn 
the CSU off, so he does and one of our customers goes down.  I have him 
swap the in the CSU for a backup circuit to another POP.

Needless to say, Mark insists that we upgrade the, er, racks in the
basement to something a bit less potentially flammable.
Interestingly, I don't think we every did upgrade the shelving...

- Avi