By Matthew Reed
The Mendocino Coast now has a redundant fiber optic and internet outages like those that occurred in 2014 and 2015 should now be prevented.
Sage Statham, business manager for Mendocino Community network, said he received confirmation from AT&T on Tuesday, Aug. 9, that the local internet service provider would now have access to the the South Coast fiber optic circuit.
"We like to call it a diverse circuit because redundant implies that it is not needed," Statham said. "This circuit would allow MCN telephone and data to continue to function even if the main fiber line was down."
In 2014, a break in the fiber optic line on Comptche-Ukiah Road interrupted service to hundreds of customers and businesses, including 911 service. In 2015, a vandal damaged the fiber optic line near Hopland, which blacked out service to much of Mendocino County as well as parts of Humboldt County.
Now, instead of a single circuit supplying all internet service, there is a second fiber optic circuit.
"The main path is the one that has had the two cuts and travels from Santa Rosa to Ukiah, Ukiah to Boonville, Boonville to Comptche, Comptche to Mendocino and finally from Mendocino to Fort Bragg," Statham said. "The secondary path runs Mendocino to Manchester, Manchester to Annapolis and Annapolis to Santa Rosa."
Statham said that AT&T refused to give MCN detailed information on the new circuit, but he was told that the secondary circuit should even be able to run along the Trans Pacific fiber line that goes to Hawaii and Japan.
In the event that the primary fiber optic line is damaged, there will likely be no interruption in service to customers, Statham said. The switch to the second circuit should be automatic.
"It is possible that current calls could drop while the traffic is re-routed, but we believe that they should stay active," he said. If the switch failed to automatically re-route, MCN can manually reconfigure with about 15 minutes of labor by an MCN technician.
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