North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Network collapses

  • From: Jon Lewis
  • Date: Mon Jun 08 01:34:57 1998

On Sun, 7 Jun 1998, Michael Dillon wrote:

> > If a large network with large amounts of nonportable space, like UUNET,
> > were to fail entirely (financially, or system-wide, e.g.), what would
> > happen to the address space that that network had assigned to its
> > customers?
> 
> Nothing. First the courts would appoint someone to run the company on
> behalf of the creditors. Then someone would buy the assets and customers
> for 10 cents on the dollar. Operational impact will be minimal to

But...what would happen if some hypothetical national or international
backbone provider (call it hypo.net) were to litterally run out of funds.
If they fall far enough behind that the utility companies kill power to
all their POPs, you could see a few days of loss of service before some
other backbone buys the pieces and gets things back online.  Sure, this
would require monumental mismanagement, and is probably about as likely as
natural disasters simultaneously destroying all a backbones POPs.

BTW....while poking around just a bit at UUNet's web site, I found this:

  UUNET Technologies, headquartered in Fairfax, VA in the United States,
  was founded in May 1987. Now a WorldCom, Inc. subsidiary (NASDAQ: WCOM),
  UUNET is recognized as the largest Internet Service Provider in the
  world. 
 
Weren't they majorly downplaying the size of UUNet and MCI when the two
were going to be owned by Worldcomm??

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