(REPOST) Everything Works Until It Doesn’t: Redundancy x Resilience / Vladimir Vedeneev

[ https://medium.com/@vedeneev/everything-works-until-it-doesnt-eddf69453a01 ] (REPOST) Originally written by Vladimir Vedeneev In telecom infrastructure, few words appear as often, or as confidently, as redundancy. It shows up in architecture diagrams, RFP responses and technical presentations. Somewhere in the conversation someone inevitably says, “We have redundancy,” usually with the quiet confidence of someone who believes the problem has been solved. But after many years building and operating backbone networks, I have learned that redundancy is often the easiest thing to claim and the easiest thing to misunderstand. Two things that appear independent on paper can still fail together. And when they do, the moment tends to be memorable. Most network diagrams are comforting things. They show two routes across a map, often in different colours. Two fibres. Two facilities. Two providers. The visual logic suggests that if one path fails, the other will continue operating and traffic w