‘Diesel Day’ disconnects power at major Toronto carrier hotel

“Diesel Day” at 151 Front St. passed without a hitch on April 9. The day is a major undertaking aimed at shutting down electricity to one of Canada’s largest carrier hotels to test its emergency power systems and diesel fuel generators. “They used to do it at night,” Myke Geiger, owner of independent Internet service provider (ISP) Server North Inc., who is familiar with the process, said in an interview. “But now they do it during the day because it’s easier to get contractors and it costs less.” Carrier hotels, located in metropolitan cities, serve as armored fortresses to house network data centres for Canadian telecom and Internet companies. Also known as colocation centres, carrier hotels are data centres where multiple customers locate network, server and storage gear services and interconnect to several telecommunications and network service providers. The Torex building, located at 151 Front St. West in Toronto, Ont., has the capacity to house infrastructure for hundreds of ISPs. Ninety-seven per cent of its 40,000 rentable square footage is dedicated to telecom space, making the building known as one of Canada’s premier telecom hubs and carrier hotels. It is located near the city’s landmark Union Station, and was custom built in 1954 to house CN Railway and Canadian Pacific Telegraph’s equipment. The building has heavy floor loading, a large power capacity and high ceilings, and for many years was used by Bell Canada as a central telex service office. “That’s what ends up happening through time and in centres of commerce,” Geiger said. “All the Internet players hook into these resources and end up geographically centralized. So while the Internet is designed to route around different problem areas, it ends up that we all go down the same highway.” Geiger said that when companies want to establish high investment services like fibre, they seek to follow long, straight geographical paths with minimal interruptions, like railways. “That happened with 151 Front St. West. It switches right next to the train station,” Geiger said. “That’s where all the major Internet players ended up connecting to each other because if you set up in that building, you have easy access to everybody else.” Officials responsible for Toronto’s Torex building could not comment on the amount of ISPs now housed there, but Geiger estimated that the eight-storey building is responsible for most of the eastern part of Central Canada’s telecommunications and network services. Canix, a Montreal, Que.-based carrier hotel is also conveniently located near the train station and is responsible for most of Eastern Canada’s connectivity. Canix president Stéphane Côté said in an interview that it takes more than a few ISP tenants to keep a building like it running on a 24-hour basis. “First of all, you need to have the specifics of ISPs, carriers, or telecom companies to provide fibre connectivity to the building,” Côté said. “From there, you need to monitor the computer room to satisfy the mechanical and hosting services for the routers, other equipment and the telecom for the Internet.” Côté added that the building requires air-conditioning to regulate the temperature, and emergency power is necessary in case of an electricity outage. The building must also be secure and monitored by technicians around the clock. “You need staff on duty all the time to monitor the equipment. Also, the actual ambient temperatures of the rooms need to be monitored, as well as the wiring and all the hardware and software running on that equipment,” Côté said. Côté said the main Canix building is equipped with synchronized back-up power generators, so that if one generator fails, another starts up automatically. The Torex building, which connects providers Sprint, 360networks, Rogers Communications Inc., AT&T, Bell Canada, Telus Corp., Videotron Ltée., Cogent Communications and Nexxia, has a pre-engineered storage area with space available for six 3,000-gallon diesel fuel tanks to power emergency generators. On Diesel Day, the building's giant generators are put to the test, Geiger said. “Every year, because there are so many computers in such a high density area, hydro order an annual maintenance on the electrical equipment,” said Geiger. “It gets interesting because these are all 24/7-type services that people are offering out of this building. So Diesel Day refers to the fact that everyone runs on diesel generators for that day.” With hundreds of technicians present and drive-up generators on the street, Diesel Day is dedicated to the building’s preventative maintenance. “They go floor-by-floor to shut people down. In case something goes wrong, they can catch it,” Geiger said. “The reason we do this is because the backup battery packs last only 10 to 15 minutes.” Geiger said the building’s office suites divide power distribution in the building, so that in the case of a power failure, only one suite would be affected. But he added that if even one generator or suite malfunctioned at a carrier hotel, it could have a major impact on telecom services. “In 2006, a short circuit or outage occurred and even Rogers was affected,” Geiger said. “People’s cable, Internet and cellphones stopped working. It was really bad. But people didn’t think too much of it because it happened on a Saturday night and it only lasted for 45 minutes.” But experts say that infrastructure hubs like Torex or Canix are well-protected. Most carrier hotels feature security guards at each entrance 24 hours-a-day, camera systems, biometrics identity security and access card systems. Toronto’s Torex building features a state-of-the-art cooling system that holds 1,600 tons of chilled water. “It’s a perpetual machine,” Geiger said of the building. “It’s not meant to stop and it would take a big disaster for that to happen.” Still, should disaster ever strike one of these systems, the results could be serious for telecom. “The outcomes would be very significant,” Geiger said. “Services and a lot of interconnection between networks would go down.” dgrenier@thewirereport.ca

‘Diesel Day’ disconnects power at major Toronto carrier hotel

News | May 13, 2011

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