The longest network device uptime you had ever seen

[the_rock]

Hey ladies and gents,

I know this is not really technical issue post, but in the sprit of fast approaching holidays, thought would be nice to post something "light" : - )

I listened to this IT podcast the other day and they were talking about longest uptime on any given network device and guy said he once saw Cisco switch that was up for almost 4000 days (so thats about just over 10 years, almost 11 I think).

I thought would ask if any of you ever remember seeing any network appliance's (does not matter if its fw, switch, web filtering appliance, whatever) uptime being really something out of this world?

I think longest I had seen was one of those old Nokia IP350 appliances, uptime was 7+ years, pretty impressive : - )

If you have a screenshot of it, that would be pretty cool too! 

[Chris_Atkinson]

Depends how you monitor it, SNMP was never so reliable 😉

[the_rock]

Yea, true, that does not count, haha. ONLY running actual uptime command or whatever the command is to see the uptime.

Andy

[the_rock]

Now, this is pretty impressive, but considering all the redundancy, maybe not that shocking, haha.

https://www.quora.com/Which-computer-has-the-highest-uptime-been-running-the-longest

[_Val_]

Moved to OFF-TOPIC space, where it belongs. 

[Bob_Zimmerman]

Just checked a few devices. I have a Cisco Catalyst 6500 VSS which has been up for 9 years 40 weeks, a pair of Cisco Nexus 7Ks up for 10 years 25 weeks, another pair of 7Ks up 14 years 20 weeks, and a few fixed-config switches with uptimes between them.

I also have a pair of IBM x3650 units which were sold as Check Point IAS M8s. They have been up since late 2008, just after my oldest pair of 7Ks.

This is all terrifying to me, because if we ever do need to reboot them, I have absolutely zero confidence they will come back up without major human intervention. Uptimes over six months give me hives.

Edited to add: I forgot to mention! The older pair of 7Ks has a peak packets-per-second since boot of 220. Yes, really. No, I don't know what they're supposed to be doing.

[Nik_Bloemers]

As a security specialist, I'm never proud of long uptimes, because usually that means stuff hasn't been updated and patched in ages 🙂 For some internal switches that might not be too bad, but for anything performing a security function, it's terrible practice.

[the_rock]

Very good point indeed @Nik_Bloemers 

[Wolfgang]

@the_rock , have a look at my older post https://community.checkpoint.com/t5/General-Topics/funny-uptime/m-p/47892

[the_rock]

WOW!! 18 years...btw, I still recall working for awhile with R75.47...very solid version! But then I read your original post and realized its definitely SV monitor mistake as @G_W_Albrecht wrote, considering when R75.40 came out.

[G_W_Albrecht]

Uptime > 300 days = will not come up after reboot anymore 8)

[the_rock]

Thats not even full year, so it better come back up haha

[genisis__]

I had a PIX firewall that was up for 8 years back in the day, and 6500 Cisco switch up for about 8 - 10 years as well.  

[the_rock]

Pretty impressive, but that sure brings up a good point guys mentioned. Who knows if such an appliance would ever come back if rebooted...

[genisis__]

It was always a 50/50 change, for servers we generally had an engineer on standby from the vendor, and for infrastructure either have a spare ready or ensure the device was under support.

I think servers tend to have higher uptimes (Unix based)