North American Network Operators Group

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One Big Box Design

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Fri May 28 13:48:12 1999

Of course with the "one big box" design, even if you design it to so-called
"telco-quality" standards you still have the problem of loosing a lot when
the "big box" goes down.

Someone pointed out to me that last night seven Missouri counties lost
9-1-1 service and long-distance service for over four hours (and a plane
crashed, but that was unrelated).  Southwestern Bell reports an 'unknown
party' cut a fiber optic cable in Lake St. Louis (just west of St. Louis)
around 2pm CDT yesterday.  Cell phones, pagers, 800 numbers were out of
service from about Jefferson City to Lake St. Louis.  If you had a direct
T1 to an IXC you could call long-distance, but Equal Access dialing was
down.

The 'unknown party' just happened to sever the fiber optic link for the
main access tandem for the central(westphalia) LATA in Missouri.  When
you lose an access tandem in the telephone network, things don't work so
good.
-- 
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
  Affiliation given for identification not representation