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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: Bet on with my boss
Scott Francis wrote: > On Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 03:37:56PM -0400, > [email protected] said: > > Hi, > > > > How important is the phone to you? I mean, given some situation that > > arises, can we solve it without the phones? > > If the network is down, the phone is critical. For any > complicated problem, the phone is also critical. If the phone > network is down too, a cell phone may also be important. For key suppliers it's important that: 1. You have a cell phone with a provider who uses a diverse fibre path to your core data suppliers. 2. Your supplier has at least one contact number that doesn't depend on their own network, so you can call them when there's a fibre cut. In Australia, our second largest telco has their mobile (cell) phone network, land lines (including their support line indial), long distance services, intelligent network services (1300 number routing) and internet services all depend on the one SONET ring. A ring that was once cut in two locations within 12 hours (before the repair was finished on the first location, the second location was cut). That pretty much wiped them off the map Australia-wide (their whole phone and data network couldn't operate without key central services) for a considerable amount of time. Hopefully they've identified this central point of failure now, and the one massive failure will be the only one we experience from them, but it's hard to know as simultaneous fibre cuts on both sides of a SONET ring (hundreds or thousands of kilometers apart) are somewhat rare. The same telco also has only a single fibre path to Perth, which meant when I used to be in Perth, whenever they had a fibre cut we couldn't call them - all we could do was bring up our backup links to another telco and send/receive email relating to the fibre cut. (There's actually two fibre paths to Perth, one owned by the largest Australian telco & ISP, one by the second largest telco & ISP, but they don't appear to have engaged in fibre swaps with each other on this path. A lot of companies who aren't aware of the small number of fibre paths buy their primary service from one of these telcos and a secondary service from a smaller telco, and then are surprised when both services fail at once...) David.
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