Even a switched off Cisco router can cause downtime

As we have mentioned in a previous post, our recent purchase of a Cisco router has not been entirely a happy one.

To rub insult into injury, even when I switched it off it still caused us downtime :(

It was at the top of our rack with the power switched off, but still with a live power supply going into it. Our regular broadband router started to fail intermittently. I assumed that it was just a software fault and cycled the power each time. After the third or fourth time around I was starting to get a bit annoyed. This time I picked it up so I could have a good look at it. I then realised that it was really hot, far hotter than it should have been. So I put my hand on the Cisco router it had been resting on and it was hot too.

The lesson would seem to be, don’t just switch your Cisco box off, take the power out of the back too. I am happy to report that things are now back to normal.