john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) (01/16/90)
AT&T long distance has been severely disrupted today in the Bay Area
due to a major cable cut, according to an AT&T operator I talked to.
Why is this of any interest? Well, it seems that Sprint is down as
well. Why? Sprint leases facilities from AT&T. So all of the ballyhoo
about Sprint's fiber optics is, to some degree, actually AT&T's fiber
optics.
Sort of reminds one of the old story about how all gasoline comes from
the same delivery truck. We have all of the advertising about product
differentiation, and it turns out that aspirin is aspirin after all.
So Sprint's advanced fiber optic network is, at least in part, AT&T's
fiber optic network. Well, well. It is amazing what you can learn
about someone when his pants are down!
John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395
john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
[Moderator's Note: I really think the operator you interviewed spoke
without full knowledge of the circumstances of the outage; that is,
unless by coincidence there was also a major cable problem out there
as well as the nationwide network problem. PT]John Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com> (01/16/90)
After writing: > AT&T long distance has been severely disrupted today in the Bay Area > due to a major cable cut, according to an AT&T operator I talked to. The Telecom Moderator wrote: > [Moderator's Note: I really think the operator you interviewed spoke > without full knowledge of the circumstances of the outage; That's, of course, an understatement. But it will be interesting to see over the next few days and weeks how that AT&T PR department will handle this one. It should also be fascinating to find out what the *real* problem was, if it ever is to be known by the public. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
m21198@mwvm.mitre.org (John McHarry) (01/17/90)
John Higdon wrote in V10 #29 that US Sprint was unaccessable during the AT&T outage yesterday due to their leasing facilities from AT&T. I don't know the specific access arrangements in his area, but I believe the following to be generally true. Carriers do lease trunks to one another; however, these are non-switched services. I don't think AT&T has a tariff for switched access carriage for other IECs. (Not too sure on that one) If that is the case, unless there was indeed a cable cut, the common mode failure lies elsewhere. Of course, this leasing of trunks doesn't obviate US Sprint's claim regarding an ALL fiber optic network if they lease only fiber optic trunks. There doesn't seem to be any claim that other networks don't have some, or even lots, of fiber trunks. What may be interesting here is the possibility of a shared BOC-AT&T switch being in the common path, eg. the access tandem. Unless I misread an old copy of Notes on the BOC Intra LATA Networks, or things have changed in the meantime, there are some switches that are either BOC owned and used by AT&T or (the interesting case) AT&T owned and used by the BOC. These are an artifact of the pre-1984 state of affairs, and represent cases where the split could not be neatly made on one side or the other of the switch. If Mr. Higdon's LATA is such a case, then US Sprint could be receiving service from the LEC, but with an AT&T owned and operated switch in the middle. In this case it is the LEC that is providing service by leasing switch capacity from AT&T. US Sprint might well be using all their own trunks to the point of presence. Beyond that, they have no choice or control. Of course, to the end user, this is cold comfort. If there is only one access tandem, you have no protection from a failure affecting it. I suppose large users could use direct trunks to two or more IECs, but, in most cases, that sounds like overkill, especially given the probablility of the failure being guarded against vs the probablility of backhoe fade knocking down both trunk groups. These are only my own speculations, of course, and don't necessarily reflect the views of anyone else. If I have erred, I am sure I'll be corrected. On second thought, omit the if clause. *************************************************************** * John McHarry (703)883-6100 McHarry@MITRE.ORG * ***************************************************************