[net.dcom] DDS to Texas

phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (01/28/85)

We have DDS lines to San Antonio and Austin, Texas, and find that
the lines go down for several seconds several times a day. On
a good day. On bad days, they go down for minutes at a time.
The equipment we use, bisync and Tellabs (modified X.25),
can't handle these outages and people get their sessions dropped,
our big file transfers (done with wonderful RSCS) have to start
over, etc. It's not a great situation.

Is our experience shared by others? Would TCP/IP (the protocol
designed to survive a nuclear blast) be more reliable? I heard
Texas was once the only state which didn't regulate its phone
company, I wonder if that would have anything to do with it.
And if this shows the direction the soon to be completely
unregulated ATT Long Lines (or whatever it's now called) will go?
-- 
 This is my opinion, I guess.

 Phil Ngai (408) 749-5720
 UUCP: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra}!amdcad!phil
 ARPA: amdcad!phil@decwrl.ARPA

jbn@wdl1.UUCP (01/28/85)

    1.  Yes, TCP/IP will survive line outages.  All implementations should
	allow at least a minute or two of outage before deciding the line
	is down hard.

    2.  If your DDS line is giving problems, find the DDS control point and
	talk to them.  (This can be a non-trivial problem; it once took me
	three hours on the phone to find out that our Dearborn MI to Palo
	Alto, CA link was controlled from Cleveland, OH.  And this was
	before deregulation.)

    3.  If you have lots of DDS lines, get your own control point.