12 August 2019

A visit to Margaret Patcher

At the end of July, our latest two new patch robots were taken live as part of the successful completion of the project DE-CIX Frankfurt 2020, where two Nokia SR14s were installed at the DE-CIX FRA 2 and FRA 6 sites  (Interxion), both with a capacity of up to 648x 100GE access ports.

The names of our new patch robots, Sir Patchalot and Margaret Patcher, were chosen at the last DE-CIX TechMeeting, as two out of a number of suggestions from the DE-CIX peering community. And after the successful deployment the two robots, it was time for a big thank you for the two name givers.

Two trophies, and a data center tour

The name Sir Patchalot was suggested by a DE-CIX employee, Susann Bechtold, and Margaret Patcher was suggested by Lukas Jackowski. Both received a trophy as a thank you for being the name givers of our patch robots and, in addition, Lukas was invited to visit Margaret Patcher in the flesh in our cage at the Interxion data center in Frankfurt. Together with some of his friends from the Chaos Computer Club Karlsruhe, he gained a first-hand impression of Margaret Patcher. DE-CIX’s Chief Network Architect, Daniel Melzer, gave them a data center tour and answered all of their questions. 


Connecting 1000 fibers to Sir Patchalot and Margaret Patcher

In order for the patch robots to do their work, 1000 fibers had to be connected to them. With their help, customers can be connected or upgraded within a few minutes, without the need for the physical intervention of a technician. More information about the work to take them live can be found here

A whole patch work family to make interconnection easy

Together with our first patch robot Patchy McPatchbot, we now have a whole patch work family to assist us in getting networks connected as quickly and as easily as possible. 

Impressions from a visit to Margaret Patcher