I was working in a Telco that owns a big backbone network in south America. Our director was very sensitive to traffic changes. Every week or two there was a b

I was working in a Telco that owns a big backbone network in south America. Our director was very sensitive to traffic changes. Every week or two there was a big meeting at her office to explain what happened when some traffic went down. That day she was really mad at us. There afternoon before there was 20% less traffic in the backbone and nobody knew where it went. I was on call that week for the management systems and I was questioned about why the operators didn't have received any alarm. Turns out Spain was playing soccer against some Latin American team. Spain was our biggest customer. I don't remember if the other team was Argentina, Chile, or Brazil... but it was our 2nd biggest market. People just decided to watch TV instead of web browsing (that was before mobile phones had an affordable internet connection). Funny enough eMule traffic spiked during the match. That was the reason I could justify there was no alert in the system for down interfaces.