Not too many years ago I ran a large network for the United States Air Force. For the first several years I was there we had an old copper-wire backbone and it was amazing to see the havoc that weather could wreak upon that network. Sometimes you practically needed scuba gear to go into those manholes and troubleshoot wiring issues. You could practically track where the storm was moving based upon the color changes on my maps within my NMS.
Even today, with best in class technologies, weather can play a big role in network performance and reliability. One of the coolest things that you can do to keep an eye on both your network and the current weather is to use an active weather map as the background for some of your maps in Orion. The PM team covers the specifics of how you can do this here.
Flame on...
Josh
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