But it was working so well this way!

This pilot fish and his co-workers have spent a week in heated discussions with the networks group. The subject: some major network problems between two particular sites.

"At some points, the line even dropped out completely," fish says. "Every time, all we got from networks was the standard reply -- we cannot see any issues, it must be your servers."

Finally, someone at one of the sites asks the networks people the correct question: "Are we running on the emergency standby route?"

The reply that comes back: "Err, yes, shall we switch you back to the primary route now?"

Turns out that two weeks before, while the networks group was improving the link between the two sites, the sites were switched to the standby route.

The improvements were completed, the network tested out perfectly -- and no one remembered to switch the sites back to the original route.

"Every time we complained about the network fault, they were checking the primary route, which was saying everything was fine -- especially since it had no traffic on it," sighs fish.

"It was quickly switched back to the primary route. The network group then checked the standby route and found a fault..."

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